Celebrating the arrival of a new member to the family is perhaps one of the most significant milestones in our lives. It ranks right up there with our wedding day. But, like experienced wedding photographers, we don't just want to record the event; we want to capture the incredibly powerful emotions our clients experience in this momentous time in their lives. 

Capturing emotion is everything when it comes to a successful family portrait. Remember, we are recording the beginnings of a new family, and it is such an honour and privilege to immortalise these precious moments for our clients.

In this blog, I will list five of my top tips to capture stunning, emotive, and timeless images your clients (and their babies) will cherish for a lifetime. 
 

1.Keep it simple

Remember, emotion is king! Try to avoid anything that distracts attention away from the connection between parents and their baby.. Keep the outfits simple, and try to avoid bright and patterned clothing. I...

In my last article, I spoke of the four elements that we should focus on to achieve a beautiful image 'in camera’. The next step is to polish these images in the editing process.

Newborn babies offer a whole range of challenges when it comes to retouching. These include baby acne, dry skin, blotchiness, redness and jaundice.

It is essential to have a good understanding of your editing software and the processes and techniques needed to overcome these challenges.

Here are a few tips to help keep the editing processing time down to a minimum and ensure perfect results:

1: GET IT RIGHT IN CAMERA

It is vital to remember that we use photo editing software such as Photoshop to polish an already well-lit, nicely composed and correctly exposed image into an exceptional one, not to try and convert a poor image into something half decent!

To save time in Photoshop and ensure a pleasing result, a good ‘in camera’ image should:

• Be in focus
• Be well composed
• Have a...

Looking back on my journey as a newborn photographer I have come to realise that there are four elements that when all done well, combine to create a beautiful newborn image in camera. If one is missing your image is always going to suffer.

 These four elements are:

• Posing
• Camera angle
• Composition
• Lighting

Now that is a lot to think about in a newborn session, especially when you are starting out! It took me close to four years to bring all of these elements together in my work consistently, but I think If we really focus during the process of creating our images, we can achieve that much sooner.

You can pose the baby correctly, find the best camera angle and compose the image just right, but if your lighting is wrong, the image is always going to fall flat. So, let’s talk about light and how we can get that right from day one.

Here are four simple things to remember when lighting a newborn baby.

1: HAVE THE RIGHT GEAR

You can’t get the light right if...

Great customer experience is essential when it comes to running a successful newborn photography business.  Without it, you will have to work that much harder with your marketing to fill your diary!

In my business, almost half of our sessions are a combination of happy returning clients and new clients that have come to us through a direct recommendation. That shows us that we are doing an excellent job of keeping our clients happy and them wanting to come back again and again.

We all know that we should offer excellent customer service, but what is the difference between good customer service and a great customer experience?

Good customer service ensures merely that our customer's expectations are met. A great customer experience ensures that we'll have a customer for life.

I know what is best for my business!

Here are seven tips to help create the best customer experience for your newborn clients:

1. LESS ABOUT YOU AND MORE ABOUT THEM

The customer's experience starts...

When I started my own business, I looked at newborn photography as a way to get busy during the week, I needed that weekday work to survive as I could only do so many family portrait sessions on the weekends, and that did not generate enough income to support my growing family.

At the time I thought; ‘How hard can it be? Just put the baby on a pillow and shoot away!’

Boy! Was I in for a shock!

I soon learned that apart from the necessary skills needed to settle, pose and photograph newborn babies, I needed a few particular character traits too.

Here are the five character traits I think we need to be successful newborn baby photographers.

1. PATIENCE, PATIENCE AND MORE PATIENCE

We have all been there; it’s taken 20 minutes to get the baby to sleep, another 5 minutes to get him posed perfectly, you frame up, hit focus and the moment you are about to release the shutter the baby squirms out of position, and you have to start from scratch! It really can...

Running a newborn photography studio can be a complex but rewarding business. After years in the business, I have learned many lessons.  Some good, some not so good!

Here are my top 10 tips for those starting out as well as the more experienced photographers looking to niche down and specialise in newborn baby photography. Hopefully, they will save you time and maximise your profits.

1. DO THE SUMS!

When I started my own business, I had NO IDEA of how much money I needed to make to run a successful business, pay my bills and look after my family. I took the ‘suck it and see’ approach and man that was not a good idea! It almost broke me and put my family under an awful amount of pressure, emotionally and financially.

Remember when you become self-employed you become the employee as well as the employer. Think about it; if you were to go for a job interview, you would definitely discuss your expected salary before you accepted the position. Likewise, when you...

Personal mentoring days cater to your specific needs no matter where you are in your photographic journey. Whether it's learning how to master your DSLR or how to creatively light newborns with flash, we can work out a day that gives you the maximum return on your investment.