I really love newborn photography (well I suppose I would wouldn’t I?) but it has one major problem.  The window for those tucked up sleepy newborn shots is just so brutally short.  Ideally newborn photos should be taken between five and ten days old – this gives us the best chance of the widest range of images.  We can push this limit to two weeks (a little more if your baby was an early arrival) but after that, it all gets a little bit tricky.

It seems ridiculous to say that a three week old baby is too old for anything but they will already have started to engage with the world around them and so those dreamy furled poses are a thing of the past.  We can get them to sleep in all likelihood but they don’t very often tolerate staying that way while they’re moved about.  The world is an interesting place that they’re just starting to discover and they like to know what’s going on and why the strange lady is interfering with their nap by moving them about.   The trouble here is that, if you haven’t booked your newborn photos in advance, by the time you get home from the hospital and decide that you want them, it might be a bit late.

So Amelia here fell into that category of still very tiny but a bit too big for the traditional newborn shoot.  Not to worry though, we simply booked her in a for a family photo shoot and worked around the fact that she was likely to be awake for her session.  There’s still lots of lovely images that we can create to capture those precious early days and Amelia even favoured us with a few smiles to let us know that she approved!  We concentrated the session around her but also took some time to capture her with her big brother and with her mum and dad as well to round out the image set.   Still great photos and more importantly great memories of those early weeks.

A newborn photo shoot is best when your baby is between 5 and 10 days old as this is when they are at their maximum sleepiness and poseability to capture those dreamy shots.  For this reason, I definitely recommend that you book when you are pregnant as this is one less thing to worry about scheduling when you’ve just got home from the hospital.   We make an appointment for your due date plus 7 days and then adjust it as needed.

My newborn shoots include your three favourite digital images which you select from your online gallery a few weeks after your photo shoot – I don’t make you attend a sales or viewing session.  Sessions take place in my warm and cosy studio in Crawley Down and cost £95.