Capturing Your Childs Personality

Sometimes, not very often, I like to stage photo shoots. I'm nowhere by any means a professional or even close to it, photographer. I use a little point and shoot! I like photographing the every day, the little moments around our house, or things that make me laugh or that I really want to remember.

But there are times that I think, "I'm gonna dress the kids up in __________, and we are going to go outside and take photos and they are going to be amazing!" And they never turn out amazing. They look staged, and no one is having fun.

For Christmas my mom gave Jacob this crazy dragon hat. It's really funny and silly, and it just hangs on a hook in his room. So, I had this wild idea to make Jacob run around the yard with his shirt off, wearing this hat...kind of like a Where The Wild Things Are photo shoot. I thought he might get really into it, since we love that book. But somewhere in the last year or so, he has lost a little bit of that childish reckless abandon and has become a bit self conscience and easily embarrassed. So needless to say, there were no Terrible Roars or Terrible Claws being shown to me (except when his little brother Braden put on the hat, he was all about roaring at me!)

I snapped away, trying to dictate the photo shoot. "Roar at me, show me your claws, run around the yard like a wild animal....." I knew I was getting some cute pics of him and Braden, so I would have some scrapping material, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted.

Later that night, I loaded the pictures up:

And then I saw this one:

And THIS is exactly right. I captured Jacob! And I realized I got the perfect shot after all. A little shy, a little coy and a little mischevious...that's my Jacob.

And here is the scrapping I got out of it, and I am semi-obsessed with double page layouts right now too! I decided to call it Wild Boy :)

So I am curious if this has ever happened to you? The "accidental" amazing shot you didn't know you got until later? I would love to see it!

(kit credit: Color Fall from Shawna Clingerman, template: Double it Up from Cindy Schneider)