I take my girls' pictures and my oldest is fantastic at wanting to cooperate most of the time - I tell her she's going to be my little model and can get all dressed up. When I did take her to a studio, I learned that if she got to help pick out the props and have some say in the poses (even at 2 1/2) she cooperated more. She helps now in deciding what to wear, how to pose, what props, and then she lets me choose some too. My little one though (14 months) is a different story. I just have my husband put her in the setup area and I just shoot and shoot and shoot... I catch more of who she really is and her true personality - she's not one for sitting and posing. I sometimes have to try 3 times with TONS of pictures to get a few good ones that I can crop. I've used ones where she was crawling away towards me and just cropped it to a nice closeup head shot. She also likes to PLAY in the setting, so I let her just play for a little while when I set up and take pictures of her doing that too - I've gotten several good pictures of her doing her natural thing that way. The other thing I learned with my older one was to just let her have a toy, a bear, a necklace, whatever...something to hold that made her happy. Things that capture my girls' attention to get them to look and sometimes smile is to scream, pretent to sneeze, show them a mirrror, rattle something, whatever will capture their attention. And dh is almost always standing by when I take the little one's pics so he can just keep picking her up and putting her back into the background area after she walks out of it.

here are a few examples of what I've had to capture of my little one on the run:
this one is her crawling toward me during the shoot:
http://www.scrapbook-bytes.com/galle...0&ppuser=27914

playing while I was setting up:
http://www.scrapbook-bytes.com/galle...0&ppuser=27914

a few where you can see she's trying to run out of the picture or get up and go:
http://www.scrapbook-bytes.com/galle...0&ppuser=27914

and here's one that shows all the movement and several of the pictures I end up with during my shoots (haha):
http://www.scrapbook-bytes.com/galle...0&ppuser=27914

Good luck!

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~Sarah VanDyke

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great ideas lady!! I need to get one of those velour like blankets from Walleyworld and go about shooting!!

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Lisa