Tip Tuesday – Refuse to Say CHEESE!

I love this phrase! I adopted it from Me Ra Koh. :) (She has a DVD titled with this name and it is great resource for learning to capture your child’s “story”!)

The one thing that led me to “casual” photography and having my family’s memories captured by this medium is the fact that I do not enjoy the forced “cheese” smile or the sometimes constipated look that comes with a fake smile. ;)

My older son, DJ, is the king of “cheese” smiles. When he doesn’t want me to take a picture of him he flashes this face:

We all know this look, right? The “I’m smiling because you’re making me, but can I please stop smiling now????” face.

I try to not tell my subjects to say “cheese” when photographing them. Sometimes I slip and do, but even the “cheese” face sometimes elicits a genuine smile immediately after.

My number one trick for getting the real smile in older kids is to tell a horrible joke (the not-making-sense knock knock jokes usually receive the biggest smiles).  The worse the joke, the bigger the smiles seem to get.

This is DJ’s smile after mommy delivers a bad joke.

So rather than tell them to say “cheese”, interact with them to encourage a natural smile. Imitations of bodily functions, bad jokes, and funny phrases are some of the tools in my arsenal. Don’t worry about acting silly. Kids love that! :)

Another great tool is to tell them not to smile. They smile every time (That works on adults, too!)