My start in newborn photography (embarassing!)

Newborn month, Day 3

My Story:

When I became pregnant with my first baby I never even considered hiring a professional photographer. I strongly believed that I could get great images of him, just like I’d seen from professional newborn photographers.

But what I got? Looked like this:

My poor first son fell victim to a complete lack of planning and knowledge on my account. I vividly remember setting up my studio a few days after he was born, getting a white sheet out of the linen closet and using our folding card table with a the sheet over it and some more blankets underneath to pad him. (that sounds safe right???)
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I took a few shots and they just looked…wrong. The angle was wrong, half his face was hidden in the blankets, the sheet was all wrinkly, the lighting looked odd and why was it that no matter what I seemed to be looking straight up his nose???

I took his photos that first day when he was just 5 days old, then again at 7 days and every single week for the first 6 weeks of his life.

They never got much better than what you see above, despite 12 years photography experience at that point. I should have known what I was doing, right?

What I didn’t know is that newborn photography is DIFFERENT. It takes an entirely different set of skills than a wedding photographer, a wildlife photographer or even a family photographer.

I didn’t know what I didn’t know and that newborn window is so short there was no time to fix my mistakes.

Tomorrow I’ll show you how much I improved before my 2nd son was born (spoiler alert, not much)…