Photography lesson #1: Know your subject

For some reason, Jacob seems to think that when a camera is present, he needs to make this face:



And this one:



When I tell him, "Jacob, why are you making that face?! Just look natural!", he does this:



Oh, for the love, seriously? Taking pictures of my children requires an amount of patience that I don't even think Mother Teresa can say she has.

So, instead, I reminded Jacob of an old story when Max said "Hi Dinosaur!" to him at school. And I got this:



Much better. And then I started saying all kinds of silly things like "Hi Hippo!". And I got this:



And "Hi Alligator!" got this:



I guess I should stick with almost-4-year-old humor. Apparently it works like a charm!

But I can't underestimate the willingness of an almost 4-year-old to pose. This was totally unprompted:



And this one too:



And I had to tell him 100 times not to chew on his sweater. But it does make for quite a cute photo:



Then I let them play. I should just let them play all the time and forget about getting good close up photos. Because this one is pretty darn cute too.