Further adventures in portrait sitting

Today Mark and I brought Will to the local UPS/Fedex depot for some passport pictures. He needs a vast quantity of mug shots as he is a dual citizen and everybody wants the standard quality and quantity of the pics on both sides of the border (each with their own version of standard.) It seems that the guys at the courier depot do not have a lot in the way of children requiring passport pictures. Will had to stand on a stack of 5 phone books to reach the appropriate height. They wobbled as he tried to find his balance on them. Mark was crouching down on the ground to support his knees, but still he was unsteady. The unsteadiness caused Will to stick out his tongue in concentration trying not to fall. So I was saying in a sing-song voice "put-your-tongue-in-Will-and-close-your-mouth". So, we had him standing with his mouth closed, but now we had to get him to look straight at the camera. A display of Mother's Day cards that featured cats and dogs did the trick as I bounced "doggy" or "kitty" along, ending up just on top of the camera lens. This all seemed like great spur-of-the-moment planning, but you have to take into account the delay on the digital cameras. So we would get Will standing up and still, with mouth closed and looking at the camera and the clerk would press the button. It took the camera a few seconds to decide on the proper focus and in the meantime Will would wobble, or look away or stick out that tongue. I think we actually cost that poor store money in the number of re-shoots we had to do. Mark has taken the finished product with him to file with the appropriate agency, so I do not have something to scan in here to show you. We did end up with some half-decent pictures, but we are at the whim of government wonks, who can say "too shiny", "too light", "too dark" as they please, and back we will go to the next poor, unsuspecting clerk.