This family brought along so many fun things to include in their newborn photo shoot that I was absolutely spoiled for choice.

One of the prop sets that they brought along and were keen to something with was this little lot to reflect their love of music so it was my pleasure to build this little mini set.  Working with props is always a fun challenge and actually this little set up was a bit complex as we had quite a lot going on with the records, mixer and headphones.

At the point where we started, Oscar was still wearing his nappy and not entirely settled so we worked through things in stages so that if he was disturbed, we still had the image captured.  The first stage was to set everything set up and get him settled onto the pillow with his nappy still on and the headphones hanging on the side of the mixer.  Luckily his mum and dad had brought along a muslin with black circles on it so we used that to cover the nappy as they looked a bit like records – fate was on our side there!

The next stage was to get the headphones around his head – it was a little bit tricky but actually he was settling more minute by minute and they were really padded so he was very comfortable.

The final stage was to keep everything else but remove the nappy and keep him tucked up and cosy on the pillow.  By this point he barely stirred so it was just perfect and I love the finished results.

One of the biggest lessons I learned when I was starting out as a newborn photographer is that these little people have surprisingly strong ideas about what they’d like to be doing and those ideas don’t always marry up with the image that I’d like to achieve. I’ve learned to work in bite-sized stages to achieve the end result – if you go diving straight in with something really complex you run the risk of unsettling them and getting nothing at all. Patience, acceptance and the ability to adapt are easily the most important qualities when it comes to newborn photography.