I am posting some behind the scene photographs of the newborn shoot I did with my baby girl to show you some poses that are done safely. Newborn safety is something I take VERY seriously, I have been photographing newborns for almost 7 years now and in that time I have been on numerous courses in the UK all to ensure that whenever I handle someone else’s precious baby that they leave knowing that their baby was taken special care of and they never felt uncomfortable at all during their photoshoot.
I posted some newborn photographs of my baby girl to my Facebook page and had quite a few people contact me to ask me how I took the photographs. The truth is that a lot of these types of newborn photographs are photoshopped quite a bit.
Here is an example with my South African born baby in a Potjie Pot, for those of you that don’t know what a Potpie Pot is, it’s basically a stewing pot that is prepared outside over an open fire, a very well known dish for South Africans. So I used this Pot for my photoshoot as if to say my baby was “Made in South Africa” as our other 2 kids were born in the UK.
The top image is of my husband’s hand on Annabel’s head, making sure that it doesn’t flop to the side, her head is resting on his finger and while I am photographing her he is asked to never take his eyes off her and to be at the ready if she so much as flutters an eye to go there and hold her safely. If a newborn comes out of their deep sleep before I manage to get the image I want, I don’t force the issue.
Here is the fully edited photograph, as you can see I have cloned out his hand and the lines from the background and flipped it around to match the wording we wanted to use.
This “froggy” pose is a lot more difficult to do. I don’t attempt this pose unless the baby is FAST asleep and quite bendy. Some babies don’t like moving into these positions and if that’s the case I do not attempt this type of pose.
Here I have my Mom helping me, she is next to the baby at all times and never takes her hands off the baby. I put the baby into the pose then guide her hands into the positions that I want her to hold the baby safely. The first is to hold the top of the head, I take a photograph, put my camera down and change positions of the hand to hold her arms. All the while she is right there, not watching me but watching the baby all the time.
I then take both photographs into photoshop and clone out the hands and this is the image I am left with below. Spots are removed, the background is cleaned up and the image is perfected.
I hope you have enjoyed this blog post showing a bit of behind the scenes work and that you can see how important it is to trust that your baby will be taken good care of during their first photoshoot!
P. x