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Now that I have a flash and a bit more experience than I had with my first two children, I decided to challenge myself and try to get better newborn portraits of the newest member to my family, Liam. I have to say that it went better than I expected but know that I wouldn’t want to do this on a regular basis. Although I find myself going out in deep snow and sub zero temps and trekking for many miles to get some of my landscape shots, I find that those are less stressful than newborn shots like the ones I did here. For these high key black and white photos I ended up using the off camera flash with the umbrella behind him and using the flash on the camera with a diffuser to do the front lighting.

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I did go to a newborn portrait photographer the day before this and took some notes as she was shooting though. But as I tried things out I have to say that it does take a lot of practice to get the baby into certain poses. It’s also very hard to work with them without any clothes on. The room has to be very warm and the baby must be very tired or they are very difficult to work with. I also had a heating pad under the blanket to help out as well. The other photographer worked with him for almost 4 hours where I only just did an hour. I couldn’t handle more than that. Below is a gallery of the photos I took of him. I was very happy with the results I got and can’t wait to do more photos once he’s more contempt when he’s awake.

This is day number 3 for the Black-and-White 5 days photo challenge. For this day I would like to invite Stacey over at Learning to See Light to this challenge. She has recently got a new ND filter set and it would be nice to see more long exposures from her in B&W. Hope to see some more of your great long exposure photos Stacey!

The rules for the Black-and-White 5 days photo challenge are:
(1) Publish a black and white photo every day for 5 days
(2) Invite someone to participate each day

Newborn Photography

/ Justin Avery / 21 Comments

21 thoughts on “Newborn Photography”

    • Thanks Sari! I was amazed at how well they turned out. I’d have to say that all that learning how to work with light in its natural form has definitely helped me on how to use artificial light as well. I will enjoy my time with him and look forward to his 3 month photos that I’ll do as well.

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  2. Awe, Liam is a great subject 🙂 So sweet.
    My favorite is the black background with his mouth open just a bit, it is a true, sleeping baby image, when they are just “out”. Enjoy your time getting to know this little guy, congratulations again!

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    • Thanks Carrie! he does not like to lay on his own much so we had to have it plenty warm and full for the shoot and it didn’t even last that long. My oldest would have been the perfect one to photograph like this as she was content and was sleeping through the night since day 1. I did try to photograph her but didn’t do such a great job but that was because I didn’t know much then. Took me 3 tries but better late than never.

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  3. Welcome to the world Liam!! And JUSTINNNN……..I hope you hear that this is a compliment…but you are AWESOME as a portrait photographer! These are beautiful!! I love them so much. They made me smile. He is absolutely beautiful. 🙂

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    • Thanks Laura! As much as I like the photos I got from this shoot, I did find it to be very stressful for the amount of work that went into getting everything setup and Liam calmed down enough to get a few shots and then trying to position him. I’ll just limit my portrait photography to a few times a year with the kids and family and that will be it. I’ll need to get more practice with using the tripod and timer to do some family shots and try to train the kids to look at the camera when it fires.

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  5. Oh Justin he’s absolutely beautiful and you’ve done so well posing him 🙂 I just love his crochet blanket and hats! Our family has always had crochet blankets handed down through the family 🙂 Once again, many congratulations to you, your wife and Liam’s older siblings 😀

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    • Thanks Laura! In a way I think that it is difficult to get a bad photo of most babies but it is possible to have bad lighting. I’m just happy I have learned how to use the light to get the photos I wanted.

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  8. Great shots. It looks like you’ve been doing this forever but I definitely understand about being less stressed out in the cold. I’d much rather be out in the snow, no gloves, no jacket, just me and my camera, than have a studio shoot on my schedule!

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    • Thanks Emilio! It did help that I went to a shoot where another photographer who has been doing newborn photography for many years the day before with him. Although it was much cheaper for me to shoot him as I had already paid for the equipment. My wife said that if she knew how good my photos would have turned out then we wouldn’t have even paid for a professional shoot. But at least I know I’ll be able to get nice 3, 6, 9, and 12 month shots of him. I’d rather pay $50 or so for a few props than $200+ for another photographer per shoot. In a way you could say that just doing portrait shots of my kids will pay for the camera equipment on its own since my landscape photography doesn’t really pay anything.

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