Photography Friday: Getting Genuine Smiles

Hello everyone, first off I'm sorry this post wasn't up on Friday because I was busy with all the finals and studying. But a late post is better than nothing, no?

I just thought I'd share some of my latest photographs with y'all. I've decided to finally cross my "fear zone" and start photographing people. 

While taking pictures, I'm always looking for ways to capture personalities, souls, characters. You get cheesy pictures when you ask someone to say "cheese". Fair enough!

I always try to photograph people doing things they like. That way, they're more comfortable and happy than just awkwardly grinning at the camera.

I started off with photographing children. "Sit down and smile" never seems to work  here. I remember hating our school photographer so much as he always used to do this.

So I decided not to be this person and started researching for articles about how to get genuine smiles out of kids.

I learned some great tricks that are now Tried and True! And with enough self confidence to try, I took these photographs:

 All I did was ask Adham which teacher he likes best! 4-5 yr old kiddos are always proud to talk to you about their life. Ask about their favorite toy or cartoon show (that's when your knowledge about SpongeBob comes in handy) and you're sure to get yourself some happy faces!

Whoever said taking kids' photos was easy never tried having multiples around! These little munchkins here were so playful and energetic that they just won't stay in one place for more than 2 seconds.

What did I do? A hugging competition! I told them I'm going to count to three, and that whoever squeezes the other more becomes queen.

Works like magic. ha!

Say hello to little Haya.
She's quite a laugher by nature, so I didn't really do anything here. I just chatted along and then made a duck sound in the middle of my speech. It did the trick!

This is my best friend Dina and her little sister Malak. 

I invited them to hop on over and join my Easter Workshop last weekend. They wanted me to take a decent photo of them together, and I thought they'd give me some cute smiles. But they didn't! The first photo on the left shows how they "posed and smiled" when I first got out my camera. Fail!

But then I remembered what an article I'd read once said about tackling. So I officially started a tackling contest between my friend and her sis! 

I got some genuine laughs and proudly ended up with this:

See how it shows they're not faking it? Now that's a picture they'd want to print out and hang, no? :)

And last but not least, my uncle and his little Jana. 

I never told anyone to pose, I just asked Jana to "Show me how you love daddy", and she did. ♥

I really hope you learned something out of this post. I would love to hear your thoughts and advice for me. I've picked up my first camera only 2 years ago, so every little opinion matters.

Have a great day,