The importance of a good baby wrangler

A baby wrangler’s job is to direct the attention and expression of the young children in a photo shoot so that they look natural and unforced.

I’ve photographed this lovely family several times before, and sometimes, familiarity makes you forget to go over a few basics before the shoot. In this case, I didn’t warn the parents not to tell the kids to say, “Cheese.”

I remember years ago, I was taking pictures of a different family that I had shot many times as well. The dad told the kids to say, “Cheese,” and the oldest girl admonished him, “She doesn’t want us to say, ‘Cheese.’ ” The dad asked her what they were supposed to say instead, and she told him she didn’t know, but she knew it wasn’t “Cheese.”

The problem with “cheese” is that the well-meaning child will stretch his mouth into what he thinks is a proper photo smile. The teeth are showing, but the eyes don’t smile, and it’s usually something better suited for a dental exam than for the family portrait.

The little boy on the right was trying so hard to maintain his “cheese” smile that he couldn’t relax and respond naturally to anything I said or the efforts of my eight-year-old, who was clowning to entertain him. My son is a pretty decent baby wrangler, having picked up a few tricks from his uncle, who has honed his attention-grabbing skills in decades of elementary school education. The irony was that we were getting better smiles from the younger boy who was not trying particularly hard to cooperate.

Eventually, though, thanks to the continued efforts of my baby wrangler and a little play time in the leaves, we ended up getting some genuine shots that showed their spunky little personalities.

As with many kids this age, their smiles were especially charming when they were doing something they knew to be a little naughty. In this case, the older son was defying my request to sit on a certain step and scooting up the stairs as fast as he could on his bottom in order to sit next to my baby wrangler, whom he had taken a fancy to.

He also thought it was pretty funny when my son dumped handfuls of leaves on my head.

The younger boy, in the meantime, had never forgotten how to have a good time. He just didn’t like being detained when clearly, it was time to go to the playground.