Don't take my picture!!!!!

Most of my children understand the concept of posing for a picture. They know I like to take pictures, and they usually play along okay, simply to get me to leave them alone. Well, Cooper is a different story. He won't really pose so well, and so lately I had not gotten a good shot of him. Since I had some great shots of the other kids, I figured I would take Cooper out one morning and just let him run and play...and take a few shots of him. Well, he was excited when he saw this fun board walk to run on, but the minute he saw my camera around my neck, he started hitting at me, crying, and just ran away from me. The week before this I had two photo shoots that the family had come along for, and maybe Cooper was just sick of me having the camera in my hand...and not paying attention to him. This day was all about him, but he wanted nothing to do with it. I tried everything to get him to look, but his head would just stay down...and then he would check once in a while to see if I had that darn camera in my hand. I kept following him around and trying, but he didn't even want to make eye contact. It really was so funny...and I think the pictures turned out cute anyway.

Later that afternoon, I set up a little area in my back porch, and with the help of Kennedy, thought maybe I would try again. He still didn't want to pose for me AT ALL, and would mostly just run away. Kennedy did get him to laugh a little, or to look at her. He loves to write, so we got him to sit still by giving him a pad and pencil, but it was all short lived. I did get some cute shots, even if they were not really what I was originally going for, but the whole day just makes me laugh. My toughest client ever is my own son.

In this picture below, Cooper is entertained with a sticky candy cane. I wouldn't recommend this method...but it got him to sit still for a minute. And I could nicely blur out the sticky parts.

There is some eye contact. I should have just played ball with the kid from the beginning.