How To Take Your Own Newborn Photos (In A Pinch)
COVID19 has rearranged our lives in many ways. It has thrown a kink into our plans every step of the way. Folks are having to make changes to their birth plans, their postpartum plans, and their daily routines. Not only are we being forced to be mindful of spreading disease, many of us are also being forced to rethink our budgets and spend wisely due to unforeseen financial constraints.
Jennifer Hamilton of Mamarazzi Photography and I wanted to be sure you had the information necessary in order to capture those first moments with your baby at home. It’s understandable that you may not wish to leave the home with your newborn with fears and uncertainty over COVID19. That doesn’t mean those first details and memories can’t be captured in an aesthetically pleasing way!
Here are some basic tips, tricks, and safety precautions to keep in mind when taking your own newborn photos at home:
This post contains affiliate links. I only link to products that I have personally used and feel comfortable recommending. If you use these links, it does not increase the cost for you. It does help support this blog and my family, which allows me to bring you more helpful content. I really appreciate it when you use these links to purchase these products!
COVID19 has rearranged our lives in many ways. It has thrown a kink into our plans every step of the way. Folks are having to make changes to their birth plans, their postpartum plans, and their daily routines. Not only are we being forced to be mindful of spreading disease, many of us are also being forced to rethink our budgets and spend wisely due to unforeseen financial constraints.
Jennifer Hamilton of Mamarazzi Photography and I wanted to be sure you had the information necessary in order to capture those first moments with your baby at home. It’s understandable that you may not wish to leave the home with your newborn with fears and uncertainty over COVID19. That doesn’t mean those first details and memories can’t be captured in an aesthetically pleasing way!
Here are some basic tips, tricks, and safety precautions to keep in mind when taking your own newborn photos at home:
1. Equipment
What do you have available? Phone with a good camera? Great. There are also lenses available for mobile phones that enhance your phone camera if you have time to plan and want to get fancy. This set of lenses available on amazon works with a variety of phones and includes a fish eye lens, a wide angle lens, and a macro lens. The wide angle is great for portraits and taking photos in smaller rooms/spaces, and the macro lens would be excellent for details such as eyelashes, toes, fingers, lips, etc. If you do have a DSLR camera, I recommend using it in manual mode. Look up the exposure triangle if you’re not accustomed to shooting in manual. Spend a little time practicing, because practice makes perfect. Whether you are shooting on a mobile phone or shooting with your DSLR, it’s a good idea to shoot RAW files if you plan to edit them. Once edited, then you export as jpg. RAW gives you more editing capabilities because it saves more data within the photo. To shoot RAW with your mobile phone, there are a few options. Some phones allow you to shoot in raw format (it’s a camera setting). Most do not (iphones definitely don’t). You can get around this by downloading the Lightroom App and using the camera IN THE APP. Then you can edit the photo in the app as well. Once edited, you can choose the “save to camera roll” option and voila! Your edited photo is available for you to print/store however you wish.
2. Props/Clothing
When it comes to props and clothing, you want to keep it simple. Neutral colors are best. Creams, whites, greys. It’s a good idea to steer clear of patterns and bright colors. Jewel tones and earth tones are also lovely. Having some extra large swaddles on hand is good. I like the jersey knit cotton ones (like these) and the large bamboo muslin ones (like these). If you have a large, flat(ish) basket (like those large wicker bowls) or a very large wooden kitchen bowl centerpiece (NO GLASS), you can use that to layer underneath a blanket and set your swaddled baby gently atop (as long as it is steady and even — use your judgement and be safe). Although colors should be earthy tones and patterns are a no-go, adding multiple textures is a great idea to add interest. Think floor texture plus basket texture plus crocheted blanket layer texture plus swaddle texture. That’s a lot of interest! Or you can have baby on your bed with multiple textured blankets in complimentary layered underneath them in an eye-catching way. There are so many options!
3. Lighting
Most people do not have photography lighting available, and I definitely don’t expect you to go out and buy it! I personally do not take studio lighting to my photography sessions, and you don’t need it either. You can work with the natural light in your home. Set up your portrait near a window with indirect, soft light coming through. Think of the light on a cloudy, hazy day. The kind of light that is diffused through the clouds but still bright. That’s the perfect lighting. Harsh light is bright and golden and usually leaves very deep shadows. Harsh light can be artistic (think about those photos that have the shadows of the blinds in them) but soft light is best for capturing a newborn. To get soft lighting, you’ll need to observe the lighting in your home. Note what kind of lighting each window has at different times of the day, and plan your timing accordingly. Light can also be diffused by sheer curtains. It is best if the curtains are white or off-white, no crazy colors (since the colors can reflect onto the skin of you or your baby and cause issues with white balance in your photos). You can also bounce light off a simple white foam board in order to make shadows less harsh. Just place the foam board opposite the window to reflect the light and reduce the shadows.
Another thing to keep in mind as far as lighting is concerned is to NOT uplight your baby (or yourself). Uplighting is the least flattering light. It means you are placing the light source BELOW you or your baby’s head, which can give a very haunted effect. The light source should come from the direction that the baby’s head is facing. The light should illuminate the baby’s face downward, from the top of the head to the chin.
4. Posing
Posing is another thing that you’ll want to keep relatively simple. Warning: Do NOT attempt the complex poses that you see in portraits that have been taken by a professional newborn photographer in a studio. What many people do not realize is that professional photographers have hired assistants who help them pose and hold the newborns safely. Many of the photos you see are actually “composites” — meaning the newborn has been held in the poses by multiple people (the parents, the assistants) and then the arms/hands have been edited out. Examples of this include the froggy pose, the potato sack pose, and basically any pose where the baby is holding their head up or sitting up on their bottom. Babies do not sit up by themselves. You can not wrap them up in a swaddle and prop them up— it is dangerous. They must be laying down on a steady surface or lying in their parents’ arms to be safe.
That being said, there are many poses you CAN do. You will be working toward capturing more of a “newborn lifestyle” aesthetic. Take photos of your baby in your arms, at your breast, laying down on your bed, swaddled on your bed… You can swaddle your baby and then place them on top of another textured blanket that is layered on top of a very flat woven bowl or a flat, large wooden bowl. I have saved some ideas on this pinterest board. I was careful to add photos that can be recreated safely. Always be gentle with your baby. If they seem fussy or uncomfortable in a position, do NOT continue to force them into that position. It is important to keep the poses simple and natural if you are not trained professionally, because you can seriously injure your baby or even block their airways by putting them in unnatural poses without professional assistance.
Remember to capture the details! Their tiny toes, tiny nose, tiny fingers, hands, feet, ears, hair, etc. Put something else in the frame to show the scale (such as you or your partner’s hand underneath their hand or foot). Also, get in the photo! Take turns behind the camera or get a tripod (like this one for mobile phones that comes with a bluetooth remote) and get in front of that camera with your babe! These photos are for them too, and they’ll want to see their loving parent(s) in the photos.
Here are some examples of DANGEROUS positions to try to put your baby in at home:
(All of these are captured and edited by Jennifer Hamilton of J. Mamarazzi Photography)
5. Take It Slow
Remember that you have time. When you hire a professional, either to come to your home or in a studio, we have time constraints. We have to capture everything within a couple of hours, but YOU don’t. You can take all the time you need. No pressure to get the photos within an hour or even a day. Only work when you and your baby are both happy. For baby, usually that means they are milk drunk and sleeping. Take a few minutes each day to set up a short photo session and capture some special moments.
6. Editing
Okay, so I’m not going to go into all the details about how to professionally edit photos. It takes years to perfect techniques and hundreds of dollars worth of equipment and software. But you do have some inexpensive options for polishing up your photos a bit! Remember that Adobe Lightroom app I was talking about earlier? Well, if you have it downloaded, you can use it to edit your photos! It has a TON of options for editing, but the main things to focus on are white balance, highlights/shadows, exposure, and whites/blacks. You can also purchase lightroom mobile presets. Etsy is full of them, just search “lightroom mobile presets.” They are relatively inexpensive (usually around $10 per set). Then you follow the instructions to save them to your phone and use them in the Lightroom app. Presets aren’t usually “One-click wonders,” so you’ll still have to play around with some basic edits, but they can be a great starting off point for anyone without much experience in editing.
Those are my basic tips, tricks, and safety precautions for taking your own newborn photos.
You can watch the replay of The live Jennifer and I did here:
Do you have any questions or concerns? Feel free to ask them in the comments!