Ever wondered what goes on in the mind of your newborn photographer before the photo shoot? Some of these might surprise you!

1. We get nervous before every photo shoot

It’s not because we don’t know what we’re doing, or because we think we’ll mess up (not once we’ve got a few years’ experience under our belts, anyway!) It’s because we really, really want the session to go well for you.  We want your baby to sleep (or your toddler to enjoy that cake smash) and we want to get you every pose and shot you are dreaming of. We want things to be perfect even more badly than you do, because we know how much it means to you. So before every session we’ll be pacing the floor, planning for every scenario, and praying for happy babies.

2. We’d do it for free if we could

I can pretty much hear you rolling your eyes from here, but it’s true. Most of us decide to become a newborn photographer after photographing our own babies, and realising that capturing tiny fingers and toes is pretty much ALL we want to do; but like anyone, we have bills to pay and so we need to force ourselves to develop a business brain. Something that most of us HATE. We don’t want to think about profit margins, advertising budgets, marketing, training, contracts and accounts and insurance. But we can’t work without any of those things, so we need to charge. If I won the lottery, I’d remove my price list and photograph babies for free every day.

3. We really, really want mums to get in the family photographs – but most of us don’t appear in our own albums

We love capturing those first family photographs, but we won’t always practice what we preach. Most of us are mums, and we know how few pictures we have of us with our babies. So we LOVE when mums agree to get in the pictures too. But we also totally get why so many mums won’t. We’re just as conscious as you are of our tummy rolls, saggy bits, bad skin, tired eyes and all the rest of it. So we try our very, very best to make you look fabulous – because that’s what we’d want if we were ever brave enough to do it ourselves.

4. We LIVE for positive feedback

You haven’t met a needier bunch of people than newborn photographers, ever. If we post a picture and you give it a like instead of a love (or even worse, don’t react at all) we beat ourselves up for DAYS about how we could have done better. We’ll sneak a look at images you’ve shared just to see how many of your friends have liked it, too. So please, if you did love your images, don’t be afraid to gush over them. Your photographer will be holding her breath until you’ve given them a reaction. Even better, send her a picture of her photographs on your walls. She’ll love you forever for it.

5. We fall a little bit in love with every baby we photograph.

Yes, all of them. Even the ones who scream and shout and won’t co-operate. You can’t be a newborn photographer unless you give a little piece of your heart to every baby you photograph. And we feel like we’re a tiny part of your family for a while, like we’ve been part of your story. There’s no rush like that and it’s why we love what we do.