When you’re a newborn photographer, you do spend a fair amount of your time looking at, thinking about and generally coveting props.

Now I have my addiction largely under control for two reasons.

1. I do other stuff than newborn photography so I have to spread my props and accessories across all ages of baby photography including cake smashes and tub splashes.
2. I have to share a studio with my husband who has raised eyebrows on many an occasion on how much stuff I have already. I am actually pretty fond of him so I try to keep it reigned in for the sake of our marriage.

Still, a girl does have to have a few guilty pleasures and so I do have a moderate prop collection stashed away in various hidey holes around the studio.

Now all of that being said, a newborn baby does need to be pretty settled in order to work with props so I actually always work first on my giant beanbag. It’s a great way of getting them comfortably into the land of nod and getting lots of great pictures before we focus in on creating one or two prop based images. That way, you can relax and get a really good variety in your finished newborn gallery.

That’s not to say that I don’t have an amazing collection of blankets, wraps and accessories that work just as well to create the look you want from the comfort of the beanbag but there’s so many of these that I will have to write a blog post all of their own!