Baby picture ideas

newborn photography poses, props, tip and tricks

Today I would like to go through few ideas and props for newborn baby photography. These are the result of years experience in baby photography and I would like to present few of the best and most successful images that our clients love and make me proud or my work over the years. This is the best selection and I will go through some of them the talk about each one in few words. I am happy to share my thoughts and if you are inspired by this in any shape or form, I would love to hear from you. feel free to share your work with us as that will keep us going to do more videos.

Newborn photography – why?

Newborn baby photography is one of the easiest way to get into the market as a professional photographer. Not only you can create beautiful and cute photos that sell really easy but Photographing babies will bring you emotional parents very happy with their new member of their families and that will help you close some business fast. If you do a good job, baby photography is the way to start. Even if you do not wish to take this as a business and you just want to take nice photos of your own baby, getting few ideas is always nice.

Newborn photography is one of the reasons I have started my own photography business. I have stumbled upon of Anne Geddes books in bookshop and I was so impressed with the cut baby photos, I said to myself I got to try it. I am not going though the business aspect of it today, but I will just present some samples of the work I have done. You will see works similar to other photographers, and of course I have not invented the wheel, but get inspiration is OK, but after a while you will get your own ideas.

The simple portrait

One of the most impressive impacts are from the most simple portraits, without fancy props and busy backgrounds. Just the model face, with a smile works wonders. I always start my session with taking photos of just the baby, and nothing else. After this I feel happy to get into my wide range of baby photography ideas and props.

The giant egg

I have to admit that this idea was inspired by Anne Geddes and this is just a small tribute and attempt to duplicate the giant egg prop in a studio. It is not easy to find a giant bigger than a newborn able to support the baby without falling over, and in the same time look smooth. After many days of research I have come up with the idea of buying few metal wore rings from a craft shop, tighten them together at 2 opposite sides, deform the frame to get to an egg shape, fill it with blanket filling and cover them with filler sheets or a fabric that is still soft for a baby to be placed on. The cover was a challenge as well to try to make it look smooth without seeing cuts and sewing marks.

Having a baby of the egg is also an element to be considered and here one of the parents comes to help. Also a bit of post production is required to remove the hand that holds the egg steady. If anyone attempts to do this, I will happy to see and compare with my take on this

The giant egg had such a WOW factor to some parents and I had to do it over and over agin, despite my intention not to go over the top with only one baby photography idea.

The fruits – textured background

The ideas was to have a baby on a complete textured background made of fruit. At the beginning I thought buying 10 kilos of oranges or apples which proved to be insufficient to fill the picture so I ended up to buy 30 kilos or oranges for one session and 30 kilos of green apples for another. The issues were that the babu is always kicking and moving so having a nice layer of fruit takes some time. Also not to mention someone had to eat all of that after the session so I have a lot of orange juice and apple pies after. Having other fruit might work but remember, you will have to eat all of that

This is the green apple background and you need more apples that you can see here to be able to frame the image properly

The old painting frame – digital photography prop

I have picked up an old frame for a bargain in a market as I was going to use a prop for a family photo session and also I thought I could use it for one of my newborn photography sessions. After a deep clean and wash, i could enjoy the vintage look and use it either in full on a flat surface as part of a balanced composition, and also vertical , using just a corner as the whole frame might have been sometime to much. After the first session few variations followed just to make as much as possible as the item has been purchased.

The image above would not look good just with the baby without another compositional element to create a sense of balance into the image. Just the baby would have been too empty in my opinion

The image below shows just the bottom part of the frame and it was securely hanged on stand at the time of the session

See below another variation on the frame idea just with the black background prop and few flowers to complete the composition as well. The baby and the frame were on the floor and the images was shot from above standing up safely on a chair

As you can see the image below, a bot of photoshop to make it more interesting. I loved this idea and so did the parents

Baby on a plate – baby picture ideas

This baby photo idea is not new and there are an infinite amount of variations possible. I have started to pick up various organic or metal wire plates for many sessions as one need variety. Please note that overall all these props add effort and cost to the sessions but as already mentioned, the final result has a lot of added value and less likelyhood to be copied.

The image below has a 7 days old baby on a plate that have specifically purchased for this session. To be noted that all images have the baby skin protected and in none of them there is contact. The surface of the plate is rough and we did not want to take any chances to have our precious models to be hurt in any shape or form

See below another variation of a baby on a plate photo idea. It is not easy to have the baby wrapped in a fabric that still looks good. Nappies are always avoided in our sessions as I do not believe they look good at all.

The green plate is just a variant of a plate with fern tree leaves added to create a different fresh green look

The image below us yet another variation of the plate ideas, but this time the plate is a huge fruit metal wire plate which is in fact  rustic home decoration element, turned into a photography prop.ot

Also the repetition of few poses in a rhythmic composition gave it an artistic edge. Of course this needs to be photoshop-ed as it is highly unlikely you will get triplets  dressed the same and behaving the same for such a sh

If you would like to read more see our baby photography section for other similar articles as we have a large experience of various other settings.

read more on the part 2 of baby picture ideas

The post baby picture ideas – poses and props – part 1 appeared first on Academy of Photography.