Melissa Miller
101 Ways to Play: Fresh, Fun Family Photography
Are you a family or children’s photographer? Do you want to level up your sessions with fresh, playful ideas? This course will give you 101 specific ideas to use with children and families of all ages!
Go behind the scenes with Melissa in a series of shooting videos, a guidebook, and a printable list of activities to infuse your sessions with FUN!
COURSE TYPE
SELF PACED
SKILL TYPE
SHOOTING, CREATIVITY
SKILL LEVEL
ANY SKILL LEVEL
let's talk about
What you'll get
A complete guide to how (and why!) to play at a session
Melissa's favorite ideas for adapting a session to a child’s personality and interests
A behind-the-scenes look into Melissa’s sessions with her clients, own children, and brand models
A culminating assignment to put your knowledge into immediate practice
Inspiration to play!
“Play can transform a session. It naturally brings joyful expressions, positive experiences, and happy memories. Everyone can play, and this course has ideas for photographers of all levels.”
check out what's in your classroom
Five videos
Go behind the scenes with Melissa in this five-video series
Guidebook
An 84-page guidebook with photo examples and helpful tips to help you have beautiful, joyful sessions
Supplemental Materials
Printable list of 101 Ways to Play and Melissa's favorite family questionnaire questions
NEW HERE? See how our self-paced courses work
BY THE END OF THIS COURSE,
you'll kick your nerves to the curb and start capturing joy at your sessions!
I loved loved this course! Melissa is so talented at working with children. I loved that her course gave so many specific ideas for how to play with children of every age! I went to a family session after going through her course with confidence that I had a handful of ideas in my head that I could use to help the kids I photographed have fun and enjoy having their pictures taken, and it helped me get some genuine smiles! I’m excited to keep practicing what I’ve learned from this course and use it to capture magical childhood moments in my children and my client’s children!
Thank you, Kinsey! I really appreciate your review. I’m so happy you’re in the class, and I love the joyful expressions you’re already capturing!
I love this course idea
Thanks, Karlee! I hope it can bring joy to lots of children and photographers!
Thank you, Karlee! I truly hope it helps bring more joy to children and photographers!
Hi Melissa! Wondering what your fav prompt is for the shy, reserved or sensory avoiding kiddos. The ones who are less extroverted in their play and like to hide behind Mama. Thanks!
Shannon, what a great question! I like to allow the children to bloom in their own time. If they are reluctant to interact with me directly I let them stay with a parent. When they are ready, I introduce games and prompts that allow them to play with a parent or sibling. As they warm up more, I begin to interact with them more. I talk about this in more detail and provide examples on pages 5-6 of the course PDF!
Best,
Melissa
Great advice, thanks!!
This looks so good. I love playing to get more natural expressions from my kids
Thanks, Jenny! Play really does help make things magical!
-Melissa
Super excited to learn from Melissa! Looking forward!
Thank you, Natalie!
What a great course offering with lots of great information! Including a printable sheet to keep with you for reference on shoots, live videos where you can see the tools and techniques being demonstrated, and beautiful images to showcase the outcome of the tools at work. Highly recommend-it feels like a steal for all you get in this package. Thank you!! Looking forward to seeing more content like this in the future.
Thank you for the kind words, Heather! I hope you enjoy using the prompts, and I can’t wait to see the magic you make as you incorporate play into your sessions with children!
Melissa
This course is fantastic!!! what great value for money, you get so much and its great to have downloads and prinatbles to remind yourself. I was feeling a little flat and now I am full to the brim with inspiration, thank you.
Natalie, your comment makes me so happy! I love that feel inspired and truly hope you find joy as you share these ideas with the children you photograph!
Best,
Melissa
Just WOW WOW WOW! What a tremendous course this is! Melissa truly has a gift for working with families and children and in this course, she has shared her profound knowledge with us all! I personally have been photographing families/children for years and I still found this extremely helpful as well as inspirational! It made me EXCITED to go out and play with my families and make it an unforgettably amazing experience for them! I found myself smiling though the entire course and I know this will translate to my work immediately! She has given tangible tools that I know will impact how I interact with children! I especially loved that she broke the content down by age group-even addressing tweens/teens who absolutely require a different skill set and approach from other ages. Well, done, Melissa! Thank you for sharing your gifts and experience with us all!
Darcy,
I’m thrilled that this course made you smile! (It made me smile while I was working on it, too! Seeing all those happy, playful children is the best!) Thank you for your thorough review, and I hope you have an amazing time playing with all the families who are lucky enough to have you as their photographer!
Melissa
Do you have a self-paced course for Lightroom/Photoshop? I still haven’t learned to “layer.”
Charlie,
Here are some editing courses that are taught through Click Photo School (I do not personally have any editing courses currently, but these are great options!).
-https://www.clickphotoschool.com/getting-started-in-adobe-lightroom/ This is a two-week workshop about Lightroom and begins Jan. 30.
-https://www.clickphotoschool.com/fundamentals-of-photoshop/ This is a three-week workshop about Photoshop; it begins at the end of February.
-https://www.clickphotoschool.com/meg-loeks-ultimate-guide-to-photo-editing/ This is a self-paced course about editing from Meg Loeks and covers Lightroom and Photoshop. I have taken another course from this instructor and learned a lot, including about editing.
Good luck!
Melissa