Wow! Newborns are such a fun, exciting and absolutely terrifying time of life.

We enjoys capturing those images of newborns thoroughly.
With that in mind, we want to give you some guidelines to make that first shoot of their lives easy.

When: We prefer to capture the images within four days of their being born, no more than seven days if we can help it at all. There are images that can be captured then that are unlike any others later. They sleep — and sleep a lot — and this allows us to pose them in ways that even a week later we can’t do. If we do have to wait until a week or more has passed, we’re fine with that. But must say that there is a change in what is possible.

Donald and his protector

Where: For the first shoot we come to your home, we want you to have everything at hand that you might need. Honestly, a lot of the first shoot is also about the parent’s comfort. We understand that mom just gave birth — and may be nursing the child at this point. We’ll bring everything we need.

What: Props? We won’t bring any beyond backdrops and blankets for the child to lie upon. We are very open to whatever props you might like — from clothing, to stuffed animals, to special blankets and so forth. And we’ll do our best to include them as long as we can. Also, having your wedding ring or other rings available for the shoot. We’ll do a few shots of hands or feet with them holding the ring or rings. This gives a comparison later in life for how small the baby really is. It is okay to have several outfit changes but some babies are not very interested in that so we try not to go overboard with that.

Brother and his new little sister.

Are we included? Absolutely. We’ll do some of baby alone, some with mom, some with dad and then some with both of you. If there are other family members, we’ll include them. We’ve multiple poses that we do — from close-ups to wider images.

How about our families? If they are there, we’ll include some with all the images. However, that being said, we encourage doing images with grandparents and others on a different day. Fact is baby gets fussy easily at this point in life. Parents are tired and can get irritable if we take a long time. We like the sessions to be relaxing and stress-free.

Wedding ring with baby’s feet.

Temperature? This will be completely uncomfortable for the parents and ourselves usually — keep the temperature higher than you normally would. Space heaters can help. The baby is used to being bundled or held. They are used to warmth. If someone wants baby’s naked butt images then we need to be sure they will be nice and warm. We don’t mind sweating a bit for the images and the baby’s comfort.

Our baby is blotchy/discolored? Again, not unusual. We can do some retouching as is needed — and we do a large number of the photos in BW if need be. BW images magically lose some types of blotchiness.