When you’ve booked a newborn photo shoot with me, you might be wondering about what outfits you need to bring along.

The answer is that you don’t really need to worry about it.  Most newborn photography is taken with the newborn naked, wrapped or covered in one of my many blankets so outfits don’t really get used a whole lot.

I do have a range of newborn outfit style accessories such as knitted rompers, lace vests and pettiskirts that you’re welcome to borrow for your shoot as well if you’d like to.   These are all designed to be relatively simple to get on and off your newborn without disturbing them which brings me to the next reason why we don’t do a lot of outfit changes.

It’s really hard to undress and redress a newborn without waking them up.  Sure, if they’re really settled, they might nap through an outfit change but doing it multiple times in a session will inevitably get them unsettled.  This is made harder if the outfits are complicated in construction – having to get a sleeping newborn out of dresses with petticoats and tiny buttons on the back is a tricky deal.

Now this isn’t to say that you can’t include outfits in your session of course.  I’d recommend if you have a special outfit that you’d like them photographed in then I’d suggest that you bring them along in that to start with.  If you also have a vest that you’d like them pictured in, then you can put that one underneath and we can capture that too as I strip them down.

If you’re doing family pictures, then you’ll have the choice to have them dressed or wrapped and if you’d like to include an outfit at that stage, then that’s a great idea.  For these pictures, I’d recommend steering clear of dungarees as they tend to sink into them and we lose their faces behind the bib and anything with large collars or frilly sleeves for the same reason.

A lot of newborn outfits don’t fit terribly well when your baby is super tiny and so they can look quite baggy in the finished images now matter how much I try to tuck them underneath.   So whatever you bring along, try and get the best fit that you can.  With all portrait photography for any age group, I recommend keeping it plain and simple so the focus is on your baby and you and not the outfits that you’ve chosen.