Lights! Camera! Action! From your baby’s birth to all of those firsts—first smile, first tooth, first step—each day is a photo op that can make you run for your digital camera or camera phone. But babies and toddlers make challenging photo subjects. Even though snapping away with a digital camera costs nothing, babies don’t necessarily smile when you want them to or look at the camera, and they’ve been known to wiggle right out of the shot.

To get your little cutie to cooperate at your next photo fest, try these pro tricks.

1. “Get into your child’s environment,” urges Bob Watts, owner of Enterprise Photos, a professional photography business in Kimberly, Idaho. If your baby is playing on the floor in the living room, you (the photographer) should get down there, too. “You don’t want to be standing up, shooting from above,” says Watts. Your baby will think, “What’s Mommy or Daddy doing now?” That may yield a confused or fearful expression.

2. Respect your baby’s personality. Don’t expect a baby to turn into a ham just because you have a camera in hand. Overall, “you want to capture your baby’s personality so that later, you’ll say, ‘I recognize that look or that attitude,’” Watts says. For a shy child, for example, you might want to click the shutter when his chin is down a bit. If your baby is a spark plug, you want to capture those bright eyes and big smile.

3. Recruit an assistant. Have your spouse, sibling, friend, aunt, or uncle play with your baby while you wield the camera. “You’ll get a more natural shot if your baby is doing something rather than simply looking at you,” Watts says.

4. Use the power of persuasion. When you want your baby to look at the camera (while playing with a toy, for example), “say, ‘show that toy to me,’ or ‘show it to Mommy,’” Watts suggests. But don’t hold the toy yourself because babies tend to reach for whatever you’re presenting, and “you’ll get hands in the picture,” Watts says.

5. Schedule picture time when your baby is happiest. That could, for example, be right after meals rather than immediately post-naptime.

See our digital cameras section, winter photography guide, and baby clothing report for more information.