Your Kid Hates School Photos? Good.
I photograph hundreds of kids a year across Canberra schools and childcare centres. The ones whose parents apologise in advance ("she's really shy" or "he hates cameras, sorry") are often the ones I'm most excited to work with.
That probably sounds backwards. But here's what I've learned after years of photographing children: the kids who resist "say cheese" are usually the ones with the most personality to capture. They're not difficult. They just refuse to perform on command. And honestly? I respect that.
The problem has never been the kids. It's the format. Traditional school photography is designed around efficiency, not connection. Sit here, look there, smile, next. For a lot of children (especially younger ones, neurodivergent kids, or just kids having an off morning), that setup is basically designed to produce the worst version of them. Then families get a stiff, glazed-over photo and think, "well, that's just how school photos are."
It doesn't have to be.
We use something we call The Playful Approach, which really just means we let kids be kids. We get down on their level. We play. We ask them to show us their favourite thing in the playground or demonstrate their best dinosaur roar. Some kids warm up in ten seconds. Some take more than a minute. A handful need us to step back entirely and quietly capture them in a moment where they've forgotten the camera exists.
Those candid, caught-off-guard frames? Parents lose it over those. Because that's actually their kid. That's the face they see every day.
Last year we had a little girl who cried the entire time her educators were trying to get her ready. Would not come near us. So we waited. My coordinator kept things moving with other children, and when this girl eventually wandered over to the bubbles we'd set up nearby, curious despite herself, we got the shot. Mouth open in a laugh, bubbles everywhere.
I'm not saying every reluctant kid turns into our best subject. Sometimes a child genuinely isn't having it, and we don't push. We never force participation. But more often than not, the kids who "hate photos" just hate being told to sit still and smile at a stranger. Remove those two things and you'd be surprised what happens.
If your child's school uses us, you don't have to do anything special to prepare them. You don’t need to coach them to smile. Just send them to school like any other day.
We'll handle the rest. And if your kid still refuses to crack a smile? That serious little face staring down the camera has its own kind of magic. Some of my favourite portraits are the ones where the child is looking at me like I'm absolutely ridiculous.
They're usually right.
