Although in my finished newborn photos, the babies look really peaceful and settled, they don’t very often stay that way throughout the session.

This little chap was having a bit of a battle with drifting off into the the kind of dreamy sleep that we need to be able to move him around without disturbing him. It’s not unusual, and it’s certainly not a problem – with the application of time, warmth, rocking and food, we generally get them into the right frame of mind for their photos. However, in the meantime, there is a type of sleep that I call ‘scratchy’ (it’s not a technical term, just what I made up in my head that I’ve now admitted to online), where we can do some lovely photos but we can’t do the big moves such as tucking them up on their tummies.  Still over the years, I’ve worked up quite a lot of ways to get variety out of a single pose so, even if they don’t get fully off to sleep, you still get a great image gallery. One way is through the use of different blankets, props and backdrops and that’s the technique I was employing here.  He’s tucked up snug as a bug in a rug and it makes for a lovely image while giving him just a little of extra time to get settled.