Daycare and Preschool Photography

What we did this week!

Hi this is Deb! I thought I would take a minute and share with you something we love to do and got to do this week- school photos. This week we had the absolute joy of working with the staff and children at The Learning Experience in Enfield,CT. We have been wanting to branch out some more schools and were really looking to work with preschools. We reached out to some of our clients who have children in this age group. Big shout out to Barbara C who shared our information and hooked us up. Hey Barbara, free mini session for you as a thank you!

A little about our backgrounds

First let me share some information with you about both Danielle and myself. Before we came in to photography we worked with children for years. Deb has a background with elementary aged children in afterschool care and summer camping and Danielle has worked in preschools and run her own in home daycare. So we aren’t just photographers that decided to take pictures of children we are in fact experienced childcare professionals that decided to become photographers-and THIS is an important distinction. We both LOVE working with children. They make us laugh- and we take great joy in making them laugh. We are also moms and have received our fair share of bad picture day photos (shhh we actually love those pics too).

Here’s the thing, in talking to teachers and staff at a few preschools we hear horror stories of the photographers that come in. They are unfriendly and easily get frustrated with the children. Every time we hear this we both say, often in unison, “I don’t understand that!!” I mean why? And how do you not understand what you are signing up for when you do this? I think the issue is that many times they are camera operators and not photographers.

why we are different

Ok Deb, how are you different you ask? Well let me tell you! We treat this the same way we do sports. We don’t just take one picture- we take a bunch. How many we take depends on the subject of course. And we aren’t the ones that choose what you buy- you are! We send you a link to just your child’s pictures and you can pick and choose (or just buy them all- we love that).

There is a saying in our business “turn and burn”. There are photographers that will just shoot and hand you the pictures- it is quicker for sure. But we go through all of our pictures before delivering. We crop, we edit, we make adjustments and weed out the not so good ones- but always leave a few outtakes in if we have them. We make intentional choices. And at the same time we do our best to get them to you with a quick turnaround. This is why Danielle and I are a great team- she was crawling around taking the pics (my knees hurt just watching her) and I was checking them in, making silly noises, keeping an eye on the situation behind the camera- and I do most of the editing . A great team!

For privacy reasons I can’t share any of our pictures quite yet, but here are some behind the scene pictures and video I took. Here is Danielle posing in our spring set.

Little ones LOVE Danielle. Not once but twice they crawled in her lap. Sometimes they were a little shy and needed warming up. Sometimes they were happy to just hang out with her. Danielle didn’t skip a beat, kept on shooting. Often just taking some time warmed them up and they got in the pictures.

I tried to get some video to share so you can us in action- I swear I do more than just pull out my phone!

The feedback we received was so positive from the staff and parents. One teacher jokingly said with the previous photographer that EVERYONE cried (and I don’t think she meant just the kids). A few parents came in to drop off their children and see us in action. I was chatting with one Mom and jokingly said- leave us a Google review! And she did! Here it is:

You guys did the photos for all the kiddos at my daycare today and you were absolutely amazing. I got to watch how great you guys were with the all the kids. This picture day was the best one I’ve ever experienced by far!❤️ – Amanda S

I would be remiss if I didn’t give a HUGE shoutout to the staff at The Learning Experience. They were amazing. So helpful, wonderful and loving with all the children. Big gold star to Amanda how became our concierge on day 2- knowing all the children by name, ferrying them from us to their classrooms, wiping their faces, fixing their clothes and making them all smile- she was amazing.

Are you looking for a change? Please reach out– we love working with kids of all ages!