I used to have some sort of hacked object that allowed you to pause time passage without pausing the game. This was invaluable to doing photoshoots because one of my subjects won't be summoned to work/school right in the middle. Any idea where I can find this?

Probably the freezer clock http://modthesims.info/d/303295

Aha! That's the one! I searched for "clock" but I must have overlooked it. Thanks!

The "sethour [0-23]" cheat is also a great help for photoshoots, along with the pause button. Always pause your game when taking a picture, or else the sims might get other ideas.

I guess I didn't know about that cheat! (and I've been playing the sims 2 for...over a decade).I tend to pause the game for stuff like screenshots but I have a thing about having to have a photo of every family taken by another sim with the camera, so sometimes it's necessary to keep at least some of them moving, without worrying about time passage.

I thought it would be enough to turn free will off, but nooo they have to close their eyes and stretch at just the wrong moment lol. So, someone of my latest uploads just have the sim with his eyes closed; noone needs to see his eyes. XD

Exactly. Even with free will off, a sim can totally ruin a picture.

By the way, the freezer clock does not work for infants as-is, but you can easily set it to work for them in SimPE in the "pie menu" resource with all the tick boxes. It even works with pets if the pet is controllable (the pet cheat). Be aware that if there are kids on the lot, you should always have an adult non-affected by the freezer clock, or the social worker might figure out she needs to take a visit to the lot (I had that happen once). I'm not sure what can happen if you freeze all the sims, but it's probably not a good idea to do so.