Easter Promo Photo Shoot: A Story of Two Toddlers and a Duck

We recently had a photography special, so we decided to do a photo shoot with two of our favorite little kids, Connor and Lizzie.  You can see photos of their previous shoots on Facebook, so make sure you become a fan of our page and check them out.  These kids could not be any more different.  Connor seems very quiet and shy.  We have hundreds of picture of him with a serious, almost contemplative look on his face.  Lizzie...well...Lizzie is WILD!  If a wide variety of facial expressions is what you are looking for then she is your girl.  Both kids are ridiculously cute.

So, what could make a picture of two little kids even more adorable, you ask?

A baby duck!

This is also the perfect combination for making the most hard to control photo shoot ever...but it was fun and an interesting learning experience.

Connor and his mom arrived first.  Like I said, he is a shy kid, so combine that with the fact that he slept in the car on the way to the photo shoot and you get this docile little boy standing in the corner just looking at us and all of our equipment with this look on his face that reads "Have I been abducted by aliens...please don't probe me..."  We tried to peek his interest with toys and the promise of being able to play with a duck (and that kind of makes us sound like we also own a kidnapper van and routinely hang out across the street from busy parks).  He was very resistant, but finally broke down and began playing with some fake Easter eggs, but probably only because they reminded him of the eggs he had from last Easter which contained candy.  Finally opening up, he became curious about the box in the corner that kept chirping...because it contained a baby duck.  "Doog," he kept saying.  "Bird doog. OH!"

Then Lizzie and her mom came in with a big TA-DA!!!!  Look alive everyone, Lizzie is on set!  It was like she was everywhere, all at once.  Connor immediately reverted back to a shy little boy and just stood there watching as if this new little girl was going to spontaneously combust at any second.  Lizzie didn't care, there were toys everywhere!  We directed her to the toys that were set up to be used as props, we placed Connor in the middle of her whirl-wind of activity, and the fun began.  It wasn't long before we busted out the baby duck.  Oh the squeals of delight that are still ringing in my ears!  "Baby! Baby!" Lizzie kept calling it.
"Doog!  Oh!" Connor would say with a point.  At first the duck kind of freaked out.  It just kind of ran in a circle and we put it back in its little box for a break.  Then we decided to maybe place it on a child.  I'm not sure how we thought this would be a good idea since it had previously tried to run away.  Since Connor was calmer and would sit still, we put the duck on his lap...and it stayed there!  Lizzie was so excited, she kept reaching out for it and calling it 'baby'.  We wanted the kids to have the same amount of time with the baby duck so we sat Lizzie down and began to place the duck on her lap like we had done with Connor.

She flipped!

There was no way she would let the duck touch her, no matter how much she reached out for it as if she wanted to hold it.  The duck was quickly transferred back to Connor.  They basically sat there together, the boy and his new duck, for the rest of the shoot, like the two greatest friends in the whole world.  Lizzie provided the pictures with interesting poses and would carry in and take out different props all while screaming "Baby!" but then freaking out when the duck would show interest in moving toward her.

After the shoot was over and the kids had left we did take a few pictures of just the duck because he was so darn cute.  We came to the conclusion that taking pictures of one toddler is challenging.  Two toddlers in a photo shoot equal hard, yet fun, work.  Add a duck into the mix and you get AWESOME CUTENESS!