3 Tips for how to Prepare for Your Photoshoot with Pre-teens and Teenagers
Each age of parenting comes with it’s own excitements and challenges, and photographing kids is no different!
If you have pre-teens or teens, you may even think that taking photos of them will be harder than when they were toddlers. Some kids absolutely love having their picture taken and practice posing in the mirror before their photoshoot with a vision in their head, and others have to be heavily bribed to even attend the shoot.
Whatever kind of kid you have, there are a few things that will help make your shoot a success.
Take time to include their interests in your pre-shoot questionnaire.
Before every shoot, I send out a pre-shoot questionnaire to help me get to know you better. There is a section that asks about each family member. In that section, in addition to including things about their personality, include things they are interested in at that moment. Maybe your kid is obsessed with Minecraft and loves to play with their friends all day. Maybe they are super into skincare. Whatever the case may be, the more I know about them, the better! I will take the time to research a little about their interests if I don’t know know about them already through my own pre-teen and her friends, and make sure to connect with them when they arrive at the shoot.
Ask what they want.
Many pre-teens and teens are self-conscious about how they look. They want to know that they look good and that you aren’t going to send a holiday card out or hang a picture in the house where they don’t like how they look. Ask them to go on Pinterest and search for poses or other photos that they think would be cool to try. Have them take screenshots of their choices and text them to me before the shoot so I can reference them while shooting. That way, they can get a new headshot for the school play or a photo to post on social media and feel more excited about the shoot than if it’s all focused on what their parents want.
Let them choose what to wear.
I know, I know, this one might be hard. I have a kid who would wear a crop top everywhere we go if I let her, so I truly get wanting to choose their outfits, but if they hate what they are wearing, it’s going to show on their faces and they won’t be able to get comfortable in front of the camera. Give them a color palette and a general vibe (casual, spring, layers, etc) and let them run with it. You can have parameters, but let them have a heavy hand in the final product. In the case of my crop top loving daughter, I let her pick one she loved and then asked her to pick a cardigan to go on top of it. She got to wear it how she wanted for some of her solo shots, and for our more formal holiday card shot, she was able to layer it on top and still feel confident in her choice.
At the end of the day, pre-teens and teenagers want to be treated like adults with a say in how they look and feel in the images that will be shared with the world. Respecting those wishes is the key to making sure they are bought into their photoshoot and excited to be there!
If you have any questions for how to handle other teenager related concerns, contact me here or on instagram. I’m always a DM or e-mail away!
Are you in San Francisco or Marin county and ready for your family photoshoot? You can click here to book!