Smile! (…please!)

With the holiday season almost upon us, it was time to get James in front of a camera and capture some A+ shots for our annual holiday card.  Last year, we worked with professional photographer Erica Cormier of Elevee Photography and were really happy with the results.  Our little man (who was just 7 months old at the time!) was quite stoic throughout the session, but pulled out the big guns at the end and gave us the smiles we were looking for.

This year, Erica was all booked up by the time I thought to schedule our session so we decided to take advantage of a well-timed Groupon and headed to the JC Penney Portrait Studio in the hopes of capturing a few smiles worthy for this year's card.  Full disclosure - we were very skeptical.  James is not big on cameras and lately, has not been big on actually smiling.  He had been a bit more of himself over that last week, though, so we were hopeful.

Upon arrival, we met the photographer that would be shooting our session, picked out our backgrounds, and planned some of the shots.  After we made sure James was camera-worthy, we got started.  As we suspected, our little man was not into it.  Don't get me wrong, he was in awe of the lights and the camera and all the sites to see in the little room.  But not in a smiley way.  More in a "what the heck is all this stuff" blank stare kind of way.   But there were no tears.  There was no throwing himself to the ground kicking and screaming so already it was a success.

The JCP session was A LOT different than working with a professional photographer.  With Erica, we had an hour to get as many shots as we could. Some good, some bad - it didn't matter. There were plenty to choose from since she took over 200 shots.  At JCP, you get 15 camera clicks.  That's it.  Not a lot of time to get a camera-shy kid comfortable to smile.  We did all we could to get this kid to show us some teeth. There were dolls.  And Mother Goose Club songs.  And Peek a Boos.  And every silly face we could make.  Nothing.  James only smiles when James is good and ready to smile.

Luckily, he decided on one or two occasions that it was okay to let loose and look semi-happy.  In the end, we did get some decent shots which was a tiny miracle so we were happy.  We won't get the images for a week so I don't have any to show you, but I can share with you some Behind the Scenes footage that make me so happy and infuriate me at the same time. Once we were done, Ed and James decided to play hide and seek while we waited for the prints to upload on the computer.  Wouldn't you know, this kid was all laughter and smiles.  I wanted to kill him!  But instead, I picked up my iPhone and took some photos so that we could prove that he does indeed smile when he is happy.  :)

I think we did well for this year's holiday card - but I think I might call Erica now to schedule next year's session.  A girl needs way more choices than just 15. :)