Ahhh! I just love newborns! I was so lucky to be able to have back to back newborn sessions a few weekends ago. Neither family disappointed, they both had lovely homes with a decent amount of natural light.
Newborn sessions make me a little nervous, since I’m more of a lifestyle photographer, it’s much more difficult for me to obtain those perfectly smooth backgrounds and perfectly wrapped newborns most people think of when I’m doing a session. I hope to one day be better at that, but my main goal during a newborn session is to capture some of those first memories of a growing family in their home. It’s such a special time, those first few weeks being home with a new baby, but it also goes by SO fast and I’m sure for people with multiple children, it goes even quicker!
This is only my second newborn session that involved a sibling (well, I’ve had some fur baby siblings, but this is my second with human sibling! Haha!) It definitely creates an interesting dynamic for the photos. I like doing an in home newborn session, because mom gets a little break from the session when the baby is hungry, and that gives me a chance to give some extra attention to the older sibling, who may be missing being in the spotlight.
I try to spend the first part of the session getting photos of everyone in the family (as a whole group and in smaller groups). After I feel I’ve gotten enough of those to deliver a gallery, I then move on to pictures of just the baby. Let me say, while newborns that are sleepy are “easy to pose”, newborn posing is one of the most difficult things I’ve done during sessions!
There are so many things to think about from the lighting, to the placement of the baby’s arms, so what you’re going to use to help prop the baby up, to the blanket you use underneath the baby... when you see a finished newborn portrait, it doesn’t seem like it would be that hard, but it really is! You also have to consider safety (hint - babies can’t really hold their heads up on their hands, like we often see in newborn photos), so how do you safely do that and deliver a photo to your client that doesn’t have hands and arms holding the babies head up? It’s pretty intimidating ! There are full courses taught just in the topic of posing newborns for photos (and sadly, I haven’t had a chance to take any yet).
I am always up front with my clients about the format of my session and what my goals are in terms of end product. I try to set reasonable expectations of what they should (or should not) expect from the posed pictures. When I deliver my galleries, I’m always so excited to see which images my clients select and have found a that they usually pick a good mix of family and posed photos!
This post ended up being significantly delayed, this was supposed to be finished and posted by the end of the first week of September, but I had a lot going on the last few weeks and have an exciting announcement coming soon, so keep checking in for that!!
Thanks for stopping by!
~so~