Show Your Wares
Get The Child Used To Your "Scary" Camera Kit Early On!
Show Your Wares
Now I don’t want you to take off your clothes and run around smiling. What I mean is to introduce your camera or photography equipment at the earliest opportunity. Children are incredibly inquisitive. They may want to touch, play with and maybe understand all this shiny fun photography equipment that you have.
If you are a parent with a compact digital camera, my advice is to turn off any gimmicky bells and whistles. They won’t help. You will find your child running up and wanting to do it for themselves.
Sit for a while and:
...basically relax and let the child or children know you are here for a while so they become used to you and your photography equipment.
Leave the camera on the floor or table. They will soon ignore it and play elsewhere (hopefully). If the children are old enough, it may be an idea for the parents to explain that they will be having their photographs taken. So they can get used to the idea.
Now, I am going to get more technical, but the basics of this section still apply if you are just snapping away with your point-and shoot camera. This is aimed more at the photographer wanting to make a living from child photography.