Kids and Animals

The phrase "never work with kids and animals" is dead wrong.

Sure, when working with kids you sometimes experience the occasional melt-down (from the kids, too), and I've found that animals don't take direction very well. But this weekend we discovered that working with kids and animals together is a mutually beneficial arrangement.

This past Sunday morning we set out to Boston's Franklin Park Zoo to shoot our line for our "look book." At ten sharp we marched a group of nearly thirty people — parents, kids, models, photographer, et al — through the zoo gates. The nine children in tow sported our gear paired with lots of unbelievably cute items for kids (photos to come).

The idea: dress 'em up, let 'em roam and shoot away. Joe Prezioso was our photographer, and God bless him, he hardly had a moment to breathe. He flitted from one cute kid doing a cute thing to the next, and it went on this way for about two hours.

Anyway, my point is that there's nothing handier than a zebra to keep a kid from having a full-blown melt-down. "Look, a giraffe!" and suddenly any tears teetering on a child's bottom lids are actually sucked back into the ducts. Miracles, those wild creatures are.

Generally, animals like being around kids, too. Kids are ever-likely to unwittingly drop bits of food here and there, not to mention the extra morsels they seem to constantly have sticking to their faces and hands.

So yes, working with kids AND animals proved to be quite a success on Sunday. Now I've just got to manage to work like an animal to put this book together without throwing a tantrum of my own.