DON'T say CHEESE! Please?

As a portrait photographer, I wish there were one message that I could send to the world and shout from the rooftops. But since I'd definitely break my neck if I tried to climb on any rooftops, and shouting makes my throat hurt, I'm going to shout it from my photo blog instead.

To all you parents out there:

Please don't teach your children to say "cheese" whenever you point a camera at them!

thank you.

Wow, it feels good to get that off my chest!

I've taken a lot of family portraits this year and almost every single time, there's a child - or all the children - who have been taught to do the 'cheese rictus' by their well intentioned parents.

Case in point:

(sorry about the quality here folks, this was cropped out of a large family group photo)

Has anyone ever seen this face before? I see it ALL THE TIME. Same smile, different day. And an otherwise adorable child turns into a grimacing little statue! Sometimes it's not quite so severe - often, they just pull back their lips, but their eyes are SO not smiling.

In this extreme case, I was trying to get the little guy to talk to me and interact and laugh at my jokes and he was so frozen in this face that I was afraid he would be stuck that way forever! He couldn't talk, he couldn't move - he just knew there was a camera involved so he went into automatic cheese mode. (And let me just say, that this was a LOVELY family and a good little guy who was just trying to do the right thing.)

So what should you do instead, you might ask? Well, my favorite thing is to say something that the kids are bound to think is extremely funny - translated: anything super-silly, slightly gross, or a combination of both, like "monkey boogers". I've even been known to tickle them, make muscles like Arnold, and do the hokie pokie. What we're goin' for folks is a spontaneous smile - even outrageous laughing is better than the deadly cheese rictus.

So give it a try and let me know how it goes. I'm out to change the world, one grimacing child at a time.