I always, always, always recommend booking a newborn photographer. Whether it’s your first baby or tenth, you will still be tired and sometimes we put so much pressure on ourselves to get the perfect image and then it takes what could have been a fun exercise, and makes it stressful. Not only that, it’s really hard to do self portraits with your baby. It’s so worth having a professional take your newborn pictures. That way you can relax and not stress about getting all the images. However, if you do want to have fun taking your own newborn pictures, here are my top tips, as well as examples of my own newest babe.
Don’t try to do it all in one day. You have a newborn for a month. There is no harm in breaking it up over several days.
Start with images in the hospital. Focus on details that you’ll only find in the hospital such as the plastic bassinet, the hospital bracelets, the little hat, and the hospital blanket.
Set the scene before you get baby to sleep. If you know you want to photograph your baby in the bassinet, set it all up and get your camera ready before baby drifts off to sleep. If you know there’s a certain sheet you want in there, put it in there. Get your camera out and ready to go. Get baby dressed in the outfit/swaddle/hat etc that you want them in. Then you can feed or rock your baby to sleep. Once they drift off, put them in position and snap away.
Use swaddle blankets. There are so many beautiful swaddle blankets out there now. Buy one or two favorites and utilize these as much as possible. They look beautiful in images and most babies are calm and sleep well when swaddled.
If your baby doesn’t like to sleep when not being held, photograph them in the arms of their other parent, grandparents, siblings etc. You will treasure these images anyway.
Hand off your camera to someone else and make sure you are photographed with baby too.
Make sure you get the little details such as umbilical cord stump, feet, and lips.
Move furniture around if you have to. Our crib sits in a super dark corner with hardly any natural light. I knew I wanted images of my baby in the crip while he was still tiny so I moved the whole crib closer to the window so I could get the image without it being too dark.
Turn off overhead lighting. Natural light is your best friend.
Ditch the baggy baby clothes. In order to keep the focus on baby, don’t dress them up in fancy outfits. Swaddles and plain color onesies photograph the best.
Good luck and enjoy photographing your own little one.
