A sleeping newborn baby laying on her front in a nest filled with purple fur and flowers

The day before your newborn shoot, you’re going to receive an email with a link to a website page. On that page are pictures of all my props and options so you can have a browse and at the bottom of the page is a little form to fill in which will ask some questions about your baby, your photo shoot and also let you select the props and any digital backdrops that you’d like to include.

Now I get that this can feel like an unnecessary piece of administration at a time when you’re not likely to have had a whole lot of sleep so it’s a fair question to ask why you need to do it at all.

Actually you didn’t always need to – it was something that was born out of Covid times as it allowed me to select only the props and items needed for the session and have just those in the studio and reduce contamination issues. However, as soon as I started using this system, the benefits of it became really obvious.

Firstly, there are some practical reasons for it. I have far too many props now to keep them all in the studio so they’re stashed all over the place. Knowing what you want in advance means that I can fetch them out of their hidey-holes in advance which wouldn’t be practical to do on the day.

Secondly, because of the amount of options that I now have, having the form means that you can see everything, browse and your leisure and make some decisions rather than feeling rushed to choose on the day.

On the subject of time, newborns can be capricious creatures as I’m sure you know and I want to maximise every studio minute that you have. Having everything gathered and set up in advance means that we can take advantage of every minute they’re asleep to get pictures rather than making decisions and getting stuff together.

Finally, although I’ve been a newborn photographer for more than a decade and I’m pretty used to flying by the seat of my pants and improvising in a session, there’s a massive advantage to having an idea of what you want from your session before you arrive and when I’m setting up. From your choices, I can usually read a little bit of the style that you are liking and also design a session that moves through your choices in the most easy, efficient manner possible. That way, we can focus on achieving your perfect image gallery at the end of it. There’s a definitely a ‘flow’ to a newborn session and I have a lot of experience in getting babies from A t0 Z which is so much easier if I have a route map in advance (I mean, the newborn is definitely still in charge but I have more of a fighting chance).

Of course, none of this means that there is no flexibility in your session when you get to it – we’re definitely going to make the most of every opportunity that arises and last minute ideas that you might have whenever we get the chance.