first family photo shoot coming up

[baileybails88]

Alright, I'm pretty nervous about this... It's a couple with a baby who is about a year old.
But I have a really strange question, is it really unprofessional to keep looking down at the screen to check the photos you are taking? I don't know if other people do this, and I have a really bad habit of it, I need to make sure it came out okay!

Also, any tips on getting a one year old to cooperate with the photo shoot?

Anddd, any other first time photo shoot tips are greatly welcome... I'm extremely nervous, I am doing it for free, but I want to make sure I'm prepared.

[BigFuzzy]

Short answer for your main question: No, not unprofessional, just not very confidence building for the subject(s)if they see that you have to keep checking to make sure you're getting it right. Plus it ruins the flow of the session... it's as if your saying "ok, look natural, smile, *click* wait, hold it.. just a second, ok, that was nice, let's do it again.. repeat what you were doing before I made you stop so I could check my screen"... see what I mean?

As for general tips:
Are you using flash? If so learn to do it right.. if not, well, I'd suggest you at least learn how to use it so that you can choose when not to as opposed to it being your default because you don't know how. It'll give you greater control (and confidence) if you know how to light (or at least how to use reflectors). I've seen very few baby sessions by beginners who were not using flash that I thought were any good. So make sure you know what sort of lighting conditions you'll have (indoors vs outdoors, is there lots of natural light or only artificial) and then practice in those condition.
Use flickr and find lots of examples of shots you'd like to try.. do NOT go there without a plan. You'll spend most of your time thinking, "geeze, what should we do next?" which DOES make you look unprofessional in my opinion.. no excuse for not having a plan which of course, you can deviate from, but at least you start with something.

You don't control how much a 1 yr old cooperates.. but what you can do is control the environment the kid is in so that you're prepared to take advantage of what the kid does. I.e. put them in an area with good light, make sure you have room to get low to the ground with the kid, make sure they're comfortable (ie temperature,etc)...

there's waaay too much to say about "how do I shoot children" but I hope I gave some insight.
The broadness of the question (ie "how to I do this") might be what's kept too many folks from replying.
Good luck and post some results!