Bar & Bat Mitzvah Photography
At twelve and thirteen, nobody wants to be photographed. That is the entire job.
A thirteen-year-old in front of a camera goes stiff in a second. Ask him to smile and you get the face he makes for school photographs. So I do not ask — I give him something to do, keep talking, and keep shooting until he forgets I am there.
The portrait session beforehand is where there is time for that. We shoot in the city, at the Kotel, or wherever he feels comfortable, and by the end he has stopped trying. The pictures from the event itself come out better because of that hour.
A bat mitzvah is the same thing from a different direction. Girls that age know exactly how they want to look, and most of the work is photographing them when they are not posing.