When a Newborn Session Goes Bad – Dallas Newborn Photographer – CLJ Photography
It happens. A newborn session goes bad. They fall apart – baby doesn’t cooperate, the sibling isn’t interested and sometimes just getting through the posing is rough.
Madison Nelson recently gave birth to this sweet baby girl. When they arrived in our studio, we swaddled up baby girl “N” right away to begin soothing her to sleep. But she was wide awake. (See image above and below for reference! LOL!)
I actually LOVE these shots though. If baby is awake, we embrace it! Yes, ideally, baby should be asleep. In fact, it is difficult for most babies to keep any sort of eye contact.
Most babies at this age sleep ALL THE TIME but there are babies that have periods of awake time randomly. This was our slow down #1. But we spent some more time getting her to sleep and soon enough she did.
At this point, we wanted to try a sibling shot. Her big brother “E” is still quite young so these normally take a bit of time. I have a lot of tricks that help me with younger children. We start with ideal and work our way to just hoping for anything.
This was our one and only sibling portrait. So sweet! His smile is infectious! But this image is completely photoshopped! Little man was all smiles…and wiggles. Slow-down #2.
Mom, Dad and me all tried for a good 30 minutes to get him in one image with his sister. (We ended up photographing each child separately and I merged the images in post processing.)
Even at this point, baby girl still seemed uneasy. Wanted to eat, couldn’t really get to a good sleep and we had been going on about two hours at this point. Madi and me were a little worn out and it just seems like a bad day. I don’t like to push babies past their limits, but also taking into account the physical health of a mom who has just given birth is important.
So, we rescheduled the session. Sometimes another day is best! We can reset and try again. It’s no extra fee with our studio. It just happens. It is such a stress reliever to have this option when the newborn session goes bad.
When “N” came back to the studio, she was absolutely amazing! She slept and was the perfect little model for the rest of her images.
Are you pregnant and need a newborn photographer? CLJ Photography caters to expecting couples looking for something more from their photographer. Our service is designed to take you from design to tangible decor and heirlooms (and “the digitals”). Click the button below to contact our studio for a portrait consultation.