Lessons

Lesson Info

Shoot: 1 Month Old

So I'm not going to take her off mom, I'm going to get mom because we've done this, so I've I've lie int that, um she stood when I did it, so what I'm going to do is I'm gonna help them peel that blanket off that she's got going on there and get her to put her baby damn again he is a different rap just so we can start fresh and I don't have to go peeling that off. I'll bless sir, so I just what they id the plan was and what I was saying before with wrapping babies is I'm just going to put might get mum to put george's head up here in the bottom down here, not just yet and then what I'll do is I'll bring this over the baby and tuck it in around her so that I'm not having two and then if you know, we work and go on with their flow of posing into the side position and onto the tummy and all that I can then just sort of, like, roll her onto her side and peel that out from underneath her I'm not having to lift her up will readjusted and unwrapping things like them, so I'm just going to help...

you pull this one out before we go putting her down just left ahead gently here first oh that's fine there because when she puts her down it's gonna be on that side it's not gonna be on nathe so very, very gently and I'm going to get into position down here so that when mom puts it down I've got my hands ready to support her no and if she did wake up and she was nice and common content I'm gonna photograph her I'm just gonna use this rap to come around I'm gonna pull it it's nice and stretchy and tuck it in and tomato and that's going to support her stretch okay, so I've got that tucked up around her it's keeping her little arms and legs nice and and tucked up it's not covering anything but what I want to do is bring in my cloth nappies and put them in underneath this fluffy rug to support her and keep her into that place and then because this is fluffy and has got such a good texture, I can really push it in around her and make her look nice in um and swaddled so and because it's it's full of texture, I don't need to go to the bottom layer of my blankets just under the flick. Adi if I've said that right and you can see that I'm not pushing her up I'm just putting it beside her to support her into position I love that she has that arm up their circuits so you do get quite a few parents that come in with the expectation they've seen all the newborn photos on your website and they want they're photos of their older baby to look like those on a system matter of talking to them and explaining them that their baby isn't really physically capable of going into all those poses any more if they are great but the majority of them aren't going to bay and they're going to be so much more sensitive to your touch when you're moving them and positioning them so I'm just going to support her head here and make her a little bit earlier that was not made so by pulling that in all around her we've made her look really cozy really comfortable just let her doze off there uh grab my camera and I'm going to get a safe shot because she's moving around I'm always going to get a safe shot and then I'm gonna come back I'm going to just the feet and just the hands oh so my exposure's up a bit because I was on that what background so I just need to dial it down so I've gone from like a a shot which is very very light and into a darker background so to bring my I need to bring my exposure back down for the skin times you can come ride in without blocking your light fill the screen with the baby skin expose and then come back out and recompose your shop well ah oh I think she has something brewing down there get a close up of her beautiful face another another I think I like to do is backlight so you conceal those beautiful features coming from this angle and with each pose that you do you can shoot that from a cz many angles is you get because if you've got a baby that's stirring that's a little bit unsettled you're gonna want to get as many shots as you can so I would shoot this up beside below close up get us many shots as you can of each pose because you need to fill your gallery and you don't know at what point that baby's head enough oh oh turn that down yeah oh oh oh oh oh uh huh all right I'm gonna leave it oh, so I'm gonna leave that dummy in but to show you what I was talking about from that next shot to give you a completely different angle you can come from this side she's kicked her legs right now but if you come from this angle and back like that you can get beautiful light that falls across her face so if she was in that nice curly type position legs were still up nice and curled you know that's a beautiful shot love shooting babies from that position I love the way she has her hands placed too. Now, would you be able to come over mom and take her dummy out for me? And I'll get another quick shot just like this it's gonna have to be pretty quick. Nice. Close up. Hang on. Two seconds. You've done it. Oh, baby. Right. You may take your beautiful baby. Thank you, miss georgia. Couldn't. She was perfect. Absolutely perfect. Is this yours? No. Ciao. Um, I have a couple questions for you. Do you always use a bum cover or do you do all natural? I tend to make it failing natural, but because we're sort of videoing and live streaming to the internet, I just wanted to keep it really simple. And just in case we had some accidents and we kinda heard heard a bit of business going on there, but it's yeah, I just wanted to keep it nice and simple today. And not I'm showing you about the posing, not necessarily the setting up in the styling of the session. You know, that comes from you and what you like and the things that you have in your studio, I have some great bum covers and they're awesome, and I love using them with older babies as well, but, um that year, for that particular setback set up at home, I wouldn't have a nappy on the baby. I would have it wrapped around and I would have on my waterproofing underneath and lots of nappies on hand to clean up any messes and things like that, but yeah, and when they do have a nappy on and those covers it's, it's adding more bulk down there to prevent them from curling up even more so I would take all of that away and keep it nice and natural and simple. And, you know, because they are older, we turned the heat down there, she's she's her, her body temperature is adjusting, so when babies of first born, they can't regulate their body temperature, so if they get hot, they can't cool down. If they get, you know, cool, cold, they can't warm up like weekend, so it's important to be aware of the temperature in here, and I could see that she was stirring a little bit, so, you know, we turn the heat down. According to her, the other question I had was with the older kids. You said, you keep the sessions really short, and at four weeks, how long do you give a parent like, if she continues to fuss, is there a time where you would ever say definitely he won't so I would explain to them that my newborn sessions go for two two to three hours which allows plenty of time for feeding and cuddling and with four week old I'm not necessarily going to be able to get as many shots as what I would from a newborn session so I would allow them you know, two hours one to two hours but I go by them and I say to them looking if any time your baby becomes distressed uncomfortable simply just doesn't you know is not settling there's no point in continuing continuing to upset the baby so we'll call it you know we'll get as much as we can in the amount of time that we have but if you if they're not if they're not happy there's no point pushing them because then everybody becomes unhappy so it's really important to read them and where they're at and you know if that mom like it also depends on the parents as well if they like on her don't worry about it it's fine that's fine, but if they like oh, I want this this and this then I'll keep trying but at the end of the day it is my call and I have to say, look, I'm sorry but your baby's really not settled and I don't see the point in carrying on because it's just going to unsettle them even more and make your afternoon a living hell s so yeah, I would it all just depends on the scenario and the baby at the time, and because all four week all babies are different, every baby is unique like that also unique in what they can and can't do. So I'm I have to yeah, be ableto understand, you know what, they are capable of it that age, but some may be in, some might might might not be so yeah, so just to further that question cause people online are asking as well in that scenario, say, you don't feel that you've got a full, complete set of sellable images. Will you, reese get cool is that, you know, I'm part of this session or yeah, so I think like, when we're here and in this environment, when I'm back in my studio, I'm not explaining everything that I'm doing. So here I'm taking a little bit more time to explain my process, what I'm doing at home, I would. I would be able to sit quietly and talk to the parents really understand them and their you know what they've been doing with their baby, what the baby likes, what the baby doesn't like any information that I can get that will help me and also to understand what they want from the session so that way I can then go into it with them and say, well, right, this is the plan, then this is what we're going to do and this is how long you know, I'm not going to put a time I don't want them to feel like all the babies and you got an hour to perform like its I n e book one session a day and you know, like I'm theirs for while they're in my studio, I'm not going to rush them out because I have someone coming in in the next hour or anything like that, but I do understand that there are some studios out there that do take bookings based appointments and so many a day, so I would probably for baby that age allocated two hour period because they are going to have to go off and be said or be fed all of those things, you know, also in my studio I've got I've got it very controlled I've got some noise playing, I might even have some music and all of those things so in my studio I would move a lot faster and I would have achieved probably a lot more without having teo to move as I like yeah we move a lot faster and not have to sort of stop and explain everything I was doing and follow up on the time yes quite a few people were asking about time so silvery photo had asked how much time for your average sessions so I'm assuming it's two hours and samantha had wanted to know what your longest newborn session wass on dh then in addition I have a question from jennifer trailer who had asked what's a typical time of a short session yet so it's a short session probably be an hour and a half to two hours for a newborn because you know because it's such a style decision and I get twenty images to go into the gallery we're talking about the colors I'm sitting down and talking to them for the first twenty minutes newborns take longer to feed because they're still establishing a feeding pattern all of those things so I do allocate more time for that but a newborn session that has taken me the longest has been like a three to four hour period but anything after that the baby's become overstimulated they become restless and it's just not a good thing for parents or babies so I tried to explain to people you know there's no point in carrying on to get more and more and more because ultimately I need twenty images from my gallery for a newborn session and I'm taking I can do for poses and I can get four poses shot from three to four different angles and fill their gallery without actually taking that baby off the beanbag once so being able to take a cz many shots as you can because you don't know how they're going to go in the end but um yeah it would all depend with the older babies the sessions will be shorter you know like a thirty minute tow one hour session so we can get a cz much as we can and then you and I have another question in our studio oh I was just wondering if maybe you could speak a little bit more to expectations especially with the older babies um just because whenever I post pictures of my blogger might sail this baby's four months older maybe six months old and maybe they're sitting up and then parents come in and they want sitting poses but I'm really worried the baby's going to fall back and I just find myself being in this situation where I don't want to do anything on safe but the parents are really pushing for the images that they've already seen and it's like how do you say it's okay if your baby isn't sitting up and just please like let me do my thing yeah it's your studio they've hired you for your expectations so you need to take ownership off your session so from the minute my clients come in they don't know what to do the majority of my older clients the older babies that come in they've been to my studio so they understand my process but for a new client when they come in I give them direction from the get go I'm not bossy but I tell them how the session is going to go and then I asked them what their expectations are so I told them you know like this is what we're going to do we're going to get some beautiful shots what I thought because you're babies you know is your baby sitting up yet we're going to set up on the ground we're going to do some great sitting up shots if your baby's not sitting up you know, I think the safest option for your baby is and the more you talk about keeping their baby in a safe happy environment, the happier they're going to be and if they say write what I really love that I'm going to go well if your baby's only four months and it's not sitting up I really don't think that that's a safe option because if they were to become unstable or move they could really hurt themselves in that position or in that proper like you have to be able to own your session and give them guidance because ultimately they're coming to you. They don't know really what to do. They've seen amazing images on your your website, and if they want images off their four month old, the same way you've posed a five month old, you need to explain what you know that baby was a little bit older and more capable of doing that. I don't think of the moment, but, hey, if you're gonna come back in a couple of months, we can do it then so really take ownership off that session, because ultimately they really don't know what to do when they come into a studio, we need to guide them and tell them about what we're doing so as faras communicating with them in advance, like you were saying, you'd say, hey totally come back, so if someone comes in and they've seen six month sessions and they're expecting the navy set up, like, like if you're talking to them in advance, would you say okay, well, if you really wanted this setting up shots like maybe we can reschedule in a month or would you be like, no, come in and we'll get what we get and then come back into mano, definitely. Not that you know and I always guide my clients so I tell them you know that the baby when they're around that three to four month mark, you know they're not sitting up you could get some great shots of them on this stomach on their back and then around that seven month mark give or take then they're sitting up and then they usually crawling and then they're walking so they're kind of big milestones in that first year when they can put, you know, when a baby when your foot when your baby can first put sit like that and put its head up that's awesome you have that same feeling when you bit when you see your baby start crawling and then you have that same feeling when your baby starts pulling itself up so they're milestones that you want to document. So when a client inquires with me and I gets a like a I am a ten week old baby that apparent that inquires I sort of say, well, you know whereabouts is your baby at because if you know you're after the sitting up shots, we could wait until then but then you know, like a really great with a market your business is they come in for your newborn session and you can go right where we could document this for the next twelve months and what they're capable of doing at each stage so being able to communicate with them as much as possible to find out what they want before you actually book. Because I've got to tell people in the past, you know, it might actually better be better if we wait another month, when your baby is sitting up to do that, because we'll get more from the session. So you communicate with him as much as possible and find out what they want and understand. Like with the key note that I went through before of the developmental stages. Understand where they basically out of the different ages and go well, you know, your session might be better off when they are five, six months old.