A difficult fact of life is that people love having good photos of themselves, but they hate the experience of actually having their picture taken.You probably know the feeling: you’re with your friends having a good time and someone has a nice smile going, you bring your camera up to your face, and suddenly everyone else in the room turns in the opposite direction. It’s almost enough to give a photographer a little bit of a complex. . .

Why do people react so strongly to a camera? I think it’s because of all those family pictures people are forced to endure growing up. Remember how it was? You’re a kid and someone asks you to stop what you’re doing, smile for like five minutes while mom or dad figures out how to use the camera, and maybe repeat ten times while you could be off playing? People are trained to think that having their picture taken is no fun.

That’s what we’re up against as photographers: we’re the alternative to having fun and being natural. So what do you need to do to take better pictures of people? Make the act of getting your picture taken fun and natural, so that it’s no longer a choice between fun or photos. Here are some ideas on how to make that happen.

Be confident with your camera.
Nothing kills a moment like making a person hold still while you work out your camera’s functions. So instead of making the shot you want the first shot you attempt, take a minute to sort everything out before you ask your subject to look at you and smile. Take a test shot, review and make sure the lighting and exposure are where you want them to be, then take the real shot.

Make it a real interaction.
When you walk up to someone, say Smile! to them, click, and walk away, the interaction that just happened was between your subject, your camera, and your subject’s insecurities about their appearance. Looking at the picture, you’d see an expression that’s part happiness, part bewilderment, part discomfort.

What works better is to talk to your subject before picking up the camera, even if it’s just a sentence or two, so that your subject is interacting with you, not your camera or their own thoughts. Look at that picture and you see a natural, real expression, not the mask of a smile that most people have reserved for pictures.

Keep talking, and keep shooting.
Another uncomfortable fact of life for photographers is that people blink, they start talking when you don’t think they will, they get distracted. For all these reasons and plenty more, make sure you take at least a handful of pictures for every one that you want.

And while you’re shooting, keep up the interaction so that your subject is still engaged with you on a human level.

Don’t start with, “Stand against this wall.”
The more you have to position someone in a special place and out of their normal surroundings, the lower the likelihood that you’ll get a good picture with a good expression. Better to move yourself so that there’s a nice background behind your subject than to move your subject in to a good background. Remember, it’s all about making your subject comfortable.

Ask permission.
Last but certainly not least, always check in with your subject before shooting. Mostly this applies to situations where you don’t know your subject: in public places you’ve just got to explain what you’re doing to avoid being taken for a stalker or crazy person. But even at a party or a social gathering, making eye contact with a person and establishing some kind of understanding that you’re taking pictures is a good idea. Once that communication is taken care of, make sure everyone’s back to being comfortable and snap away.

Being a good portrait photographer is first and foremost about the personal interaction between you and your subject. Keep these rules in mind and you’ll see better expressions in your pictures, and you’ll have more fun making images.