Helping your clients relax into the process is a first step in any prompted photoshoot, and this prompt also serves to help you work out the best approach for your session. With the right sequence of prompts you can take your clients from quiet and intimate, to high energy, big movement shots, and this prompt helps you work out your starting point. Avoid the awkward by aligning your prompted session with their personalities, and capture what we’re here to shoot: real emotions and moments between real people.
Break the ice: open-ended questions to help people warm up during a photoshoot
This prompt is also useful for introverts, or distracted extroverts, or anyone who needs a bit of help coming up with something more interesting than “How’s the weather?” when you first meet with your clients.
How to use this photo pose prompt
To help nervous kids warm up, and frazzled parents relax, take your time. Don’t launch into a rapid-fire burst of prompts that will leave your subjects leaping from one spot to another.
To break the ice, get them talking about themselves with open-ended questions as shown on the prompt card. Then keep things going: Tell me more about X. How did that make you feel? Throw to another family member: What do you think about X? and so on. Dig deep on one question.
From this, interpret the energy of the session, taking your lead from the family. Are they high energy and ready for action? Then start with some fun, high energy prompts before settling into more intimate ones. Or are they quiet, introverted, and connected? Start with emotion-filled, serious prompts instead.
Prompt: Break the Ice
- Break the ice and get them talking by asking open-ended questions.
- What’s your family’s story?
- What’s the most important thing I should know about you all?
- What’s going well for you?
- What absolutely excites you right now?
- Keep things going: Tell me more about X. How did that make you feel? Throw to another family member: What do you think about X?
- Let the family lead the way: choose starting prompts that match their energy level.
Creative extension
- Get them talking to each other: What’s one thing about you that no one in your family knows? What would surprise your (mother, father, sister, etc) about you? What would X say is your best quality? What would X say is your favourite thing about (Christmas, birthdays, etc: you could choose something relevant to the shoot).
Tag @promptographerguide and use the hashtag #promptographerguide to share your best tips for helping families relax into a shoot with you.
Want this prompt in your Field Cards set?
All the info in this prompt post is summarized onto a single card in the Promptographer Guide Field Cards, with the details given in the accompanying Guidebook. All the ideas are given on the one card so you have a rich, comprehensive tool for sparking ideas. I’ve designed it this way so you only need five to ten cards to build a whole photoshoot.
If you want this prompt in your set, make sure you include Set 6: Family Essentials in your Field Cards.
