The ABC's of a Chumba Newborn Photo Shoot
A - Accessories: Accessories can be simple or complicated, depending on your choice. We like to keep things simple and concentrate on the beauty of your new born baby. You can discuss with us, ahead of time, what look you are going for and then we can choose accessories to support your look.
B - Be Patient: I cannot stress this enough. Babies fuss, stir, startle, and cry. It happens. If we want to have a baby sleep deeply enough to pose, we are going to have to be super patient. Whilst we are waiting for baby to get in the mood we can get to know you better. Relax and enjoy the experience.
C - Clothing: (yours & baby's): Yours: Wear something comfortable and cool! It will be hot in the session and you will be up, down and all around! Wear something white, black or grey so you do not reflect colour casts onto the baby's skin. Baby's: Nothing at all or very, very simple (like stripped down to a nappy) is best! Naked babies can be posed, wrapped, and photographed many different ways, and there is nothing as timeless as a newborn baby. Cute outfits are often too large for newborn babies and tend to overpower them, so we keep it simple...very little, like a nappy cover, or nothing at all.
D - Development: The newborn period is a unique stage of a baby's development. Understanding about things like startle reflex, rooting reflex, muscle and joint development, flexibility, lack of head control, feeding needs, calming and sleep stages is essential to allowing us to work with newborn babies safely and successfully.
E - Energy: Energy will be required in bundles by us, you just need to relax.
F - Food: A hungry baby will not stay asleep long. We may ask you to feed baby during the session. This may be outside the your baby’s normal routine, that’s if you are lucky enough to have managed to get one yet.
G - Gently: We will gently position baby in all of the poses that we attempt. babies are different and we will not be able to get all positions from all babies.
H - Heat: We will keep the area where the baby is going to be very warm. It may feel like a sauna to us but to a baby who has been used to a constant temperature of 98.6, it isn't hot at all. We will use portable heaters which provide this heat they also provide some nice background noise to help baby relax.
I - Inspire: We will watch your baby and let its own personal character inspire us in the images we take.
K - Keep close: By having prepared rolled up blankets as well as wraps, hats, covers, etc. These will be within arm's reach. This keeps us close to baby at all times as well as saving time.
L - Lens: We tend to use 3 lenses on three camera bodies, this not only speeds up the taking of photos, but we will not have to stop to change lenses during the session. We will have a fixed length prime lens for shallow depth of field shots, a professional quality zoom for general shots and a macro lens for close up detail of lips, soft ears, eyelashes, fingers and toes.
M - Mess: Babies make them! all of the time. Don’t worry we can clean up and keep going.
N - Noise: White noise machines or just a hair dryer can be very useful at keeping baby asleep and happy. If your baby starts to cry or fuss whilst posing we will often get really close and start loudly “shussssh shussssshing” close to baby's ear.
P - Poses: Whatever poses we use we will keep baby safe. Wide bases, weighted bottoms and padded edges all help in our goal of beautiful images in a safe environment.
Q - Quiet: Isn't necessary, or even that helpful most of the time. Keeping white noise going at a fairly loud level and making a normal amount of noise, as well as talking to mum and dad, will help to keep baby from startling every time you make a noise.
R - Re Touch: Newborn photography requires thorough knowledge of how to achieve good skin tones. Newborns tend to be blotchy, pale, and some have baby acne. We retouch skin in a natural looking way so that the extremes are reduced.
S - Safety: Safety is, by far, the most important priority for us. We will not attempt any pose, angle or setup that might put baby in danger in any way at any time. We will be baby spotting at all times.
T - Time: Plan on 2-4 hours for the session. Newborn sessions are quite different from other types of photography in that they just can't be put on a schedule, time must be allowed for baby's needs to be met. In 2-4 hours we should get a variety of posed portraits of baby.
U - Understanding: Understand that newborn babies are different so sessions will be flexible and "a go with the flow attitude." will be required. We might not get all of the shots we had in mind but we are sure that we will get images that you will love.
V - Very rewarding!: Newborn photography is rewarding both in the experience (who doesn't love cuddling a tiny babies?) We place a high value on the fleeting newborn days, and we enjoy investing our time thinking that one day your newborn will look at the image captured to see if their own baby looks like them as a newborn!
W - Wrap: We often start with wrapping babies in cloth. This relaxes them and helps them to fall into a deep sleep. We can then undo the wrap them for those dreamy sleeping poses.