Newborns and After School Appointments

One of the questions that I quite often get asked when it comes to newborn photo shoots is whether it’s possible to have an after school appointment so older siblings can join in when they are home for the day.

The short answer to this is no and here’s why.  It’s not that I don’t want older siblings to be part of the session – I definitely do! – but it’s more a question of timing that works well for newborns being compliant enough to get their pictures taken.  The later it gets in the day, the less cooperative they become. Whatever the reason behind the ‘witching hour’ is, it’s very real and it means that we generally end up with a very unsettled baby and no pictures.  Therefore, I don’t take newborn appointments with a start time of later than 2pm.

The studio is open on Saturdays of course but those appointments are quite regularly booked up or at least it’s hard to find a two hour slot for a newborn shoot in the time that we have to get those sleepy photos (ie the baby’s first two weeks with you).

But worry not – there is a solution!  What I recommend doing is splitting the session so that we book a normal morning, weekday slot to get the bulk of the newborn photos in the can and then a short pop in visit to the studio on a Saturday to capture the siblings together.  This session is really short and sweet as we only have the one goal in mind and it’s also not quite so time critical as the main newborn session so we extend the time window for this a little bit.

There’s no extra charge for this and, from experience, it really is the best way to accomplish the goal of great newborn pictures and sibling shots with school age children as well.