How To DIY Your Newborn Photoshoot

You’ve managed to get through your pregnancy. You’ve conquered morning sickness and done all the hard part of bringing your baby into the world. Now the fun part begins and you get to start making those lasting memories with your newest family member.

There are so many costs associated with having a new baby from choosing the right travel system to covering your maternity time off work. But, along with all that, you’ll still want to be able to capture these moments in memories that will last a lifetime. As we all know, they don’t stay this small for long.

There are many photographers out there that you can hire who will be able to snap that perfect shot or two of your gorgeous little bundle of joy and then charge hundreds for the images. I had this done when my son was born and they are amazing and I love looking back at those images and remembering when he was so small and didn’t answer back. However, this time around with our daughter, we thought we would give it a go at re-creating a newborn photoshoot ourselves. And, I am so pleased we did. We saved so much money which we will now be able to use elsewhere or on other family activities and I am so chuffed with how the images came out and (without blowing my own trumpet) think they look professional.

So here’s some tips and the steps on how you can do this too.

How To Prepare For Your Shoot

1. Crank your heating up high. If you are going to have your baby in nappies, light clothing or naked, you must have made your space cosy and warm for your newborn baby.
2. Feed your baby beforehand. In an ideal world, you want your baby to have a lovely full tummy and to be in that content place where they are full and sleepy. This will give you the best chance at being able to prop your baby in different positions and to get the best pictures. No one wants to capture their child baby screaming in photos that will last a lifetime.
3. Plan how to want to position your baby and what props you plan on using. You want to make sure this all runs as smoothly as possible and to help with that have an idea of how you are going to pose your child and have the items to hand that will be involved in making this shoot. You can use tools such as a google search for inspiration on how to stage your backdrop to get those lovely images. We decided to use a large picnic hamper as our main prop and then made sure we had made it baby friendly by filling it will a cushion for comfort and then a peach coloured sheet to make it look pretty.
4. Choose what camera you will be using. We are very fortunate that my partner has a fancy camera that we can use for some of the pictures however I did use my phone as well (possibly for the majority of the shoot as I found it easier to use).

How To Do The Photoshoot

Now you’ve warmed your house, fed the baby and prepared your props, you’re now ready to get started.

1. Do some tester pictures. Before stripping the baby down we initially did some test shots to make sure we were getting the desired ‘looked’ with our setting and to make sure she was comfortable and in a deep enough sleep to be manoeuvred into our desired positions.
2. Put white noise on. Although this isn’t necessarily needed I found it helped to have white noise playing in the background to keep her settled.
3. Change your child into your chosen outfit.
4. Place them on or in your chosen backdrop. Don’t worry too much if it’s not perfect there are different apps and software available if needed to allow you to edit the image and tweak the colours and brightness. I used a few apps such as ‘Lightroom’ to edit my pictures and to apply presets to change the brightness, contrast etc.
5. Try lots of different angles. I am no photography expert so it was all about trial and error for me. However, I did find that getting to the same level as the baby gave beautiful images as well as using different positions and angles. For me, I ended up taking over 10 pictures for every 1 that I kept, but truthfully that made it fun and enjoyable testing all these ideas out.
6. Add in additional props. Newborn babies are gorgeous and truthfully they don’t necessarily need ‘extras’ however, I personally love having them included and how they can change image. So mix it up. Use hats, headbands, blankets, soft toys. Consider when choosing these the texture. The more texture in the item the more it will show within the image and add more depth.
7. Listen to your baby. the joy of doing the photoshoot yourself is you have the luxury of time. If your baby is unsettled or cluster feeding and you’re not able to get all of your pictures done, don’t worry. You can always try again tomorrow.

Photoshop

If you’ve struggled with backdrops or props, you can always use photoshop and layer your baby into a predesigned background. It’s super easy to do, even for beginners (like me) with no photoshop experience.

It will incur you some cost to buy the software. I opted to buy the mobile app as it was cheaper and offered all the features I wanted, although there is a desktop version. Even will the cost of buying this it still offers significant savings in comparison to a professional photoshoot.

Once you’ve got the software you then just need to find some backgrounds. Esty had a great selection and had options that were leas than a pound!!

Then have fun applying your image into the background to get the result you desire.

Hope this helped and you get some great pictures!!