The Best Bribes To Get Your Child To Cooperate During A Photo Session

All You Want

You have been planning this photo shoot for weeks. Its all you want! You have all of the outfits picked out for each and every one of your family members. You have invested money and time into making them perfect! You spend over an hour trying to wrangle your family to get dressed, all the while, trying to make sure your little ones don’t grab that bag of Doritos and then wipe the cheese all over their photo shoot outfits! All you want is for everyone to be happy, so the photos reflect your family in their best moments! You arrive at the shoot, knowing in your mind that there’s a 90% chance no one is going to cooperate, partner included! They are hungry, tired, bored. Unless, my friends, you have a plan…..

Bribes For The Win

Here is your plan. BRIBE THEM. There are very few times that I have bribed my kids in my life, and this is one of them, EVERY SINGLE TIME. Older kids love to make deals, while younger ones love instant gratification types of bribes. Let’s explore the two different categories of older and younger kids.

Older Kids

Older kids (5 and older) will cooperate best if they know they are going to get something they want, in the very very near future. Ice cream or the candy store is a fav for most older kids. I mean, I’d say they deserve some candy or ice cream after putting up with a camera in their face for an hour! Modeling is hard work! I have a family that has made this a tradition, and has even incorporated it as part of their actual photo session. This particular family has girls that are 10 and 12. When choosing a location each year, we pick one where we can get ice cream during the last part of our shoot, and they eat it while I photograph them indulging! They LOVE doing this AND they LOOK FORWARD to their session every year! I adore being a part of this tradition for this family!

Younger Kids

For the little ones (4 and under), on site bribes are more necessary. What does this look like? A bag of skittles, some M & M’s , even some puffs for your very little one. Kids love it when you give them one at a time, and they run around with a smile on their face, playfully and happy because they are getting treats! However, the bribe doesn’t have to be food. For this session here on this blog post, we were at a nature preserve where there are turtle sitings every now and again. We got creative, and told Miss Stella that we were going on a turtle hunt. For an entire hour, this turtle hunt kept her happy and going! It worked wonders, although I will say we never did see a turtle ;p