As a newborn photographer, one of the things we deal with is unpredictability. Babies usually don’t arrive on schedule, and births don’t always go as planned. Adapting to these things is something that I feel like makes me a a great newborn photographer. Baby Elliott arrived a little earlier than expected and mom had some complications that ended up in a hospital stay.

Did this mean that we couldn’t do his newborn photos? Absolutely not! Most newborn photographers will say the standard for photographing newborns is around 7-10 days after birth. I have learned in my many years of photographing and posing babies though, that every single baby is different. Sometimes you will have a baby who is scheduled in that time frame and won’t sleep a wink, or has gotten a little more “stiff” and doesn’t want to be posed, or curled up as much anymore. Then there are others who are weeks past that and sleep like champs!

I treat every newborn individually and just let parents know that we will always let baby lead the session. Of course there are times where we find majority of babies will sleep better, and allow for posing, but if baby just isn’t having it, I will make some adjustments so that parents will still get some wonderful images of their baby.

By the time Elliott and his mom were feeling up to their photo session, he was several weeks old. I just let Mom and Dad know that we will start with some wrapped photos of Elliott as that usually helps older babies fall into a deeper sleep, and if all goes well, we will try for some of those naked shots that I know Mom was hoping for. We took breaks for snuggling and feeding and in the end got a wonderful gallery I know Mom and Dad are happy with. Scroll on to see some images from Elliott’s session!