Photographing Older Newborn Babies

Baby Christina

Normally newborn photography sessions are conducting when babies are under 3 weeks of age – with a preference for the first 2 weeks. The reason behind this is that babies are still all curled up (from being snuggled inside the womb for 9 months), are REALLY sleepy and are happy to be moved and posed.

….. But this does not mean that we cannot take GORGEOUS photos of older newborn babies! Quite the opposite actually – I can ABSOLUTELY take beautiful newborn photos of babies that are in the 4 to 12 week old bracket.

The recent health crisis of the Coronavirus COVID-19 has impacted newborn photography in many ways. Like other newborn photographers around the world, I shut down my studio during the peak of the crisis in Australia. For my clients that had their babies born during the ‘stay-at-home’ shut down period, this meant that I was unable to photograph their newborn babies during the first three weeks after birth.

Baby Christina is one of those babies. At the point that I was able to re-open my studio, little Christina was already over 5 weeks old. Her mum really wanted ‘newborn’ photos, and feared that she had missed out. We scheduled her session and I assured her that I would be able to to take beautiful, professional photos of Christina, even though she was an ‘older’ newborn baby.

Like all of my newborn photography sessions, each shoot is styled to match YOUR taste. Christina’s mum wanted pretty and pink and she LOVED teddy bear hats and outfits. She had seen this pose that I had taken with a 2 week old and loved the pink soft fluffy rug. So I tweaked the set-up to include a bear theme. Thankfully, Christina still fit into my newborn baby bear outfit. All the props are included in your session. This amazingly soft hand-knitted outfit has come all the way from a lovely and VERY talented lady in Italy, here is the link to her page: Fluffy Knits

How are the photos of ‘older’ newborns different to the under 3 week old session?

They are not really that different! There are some poses that your baby may not do anymore – anatomically, your older baby has started to stretch our their limbs, joints are now more ‘locked’ and they will not curl up and ‘squish’ quite as easily (you may have noticed your baby weirdly stretching and straightening out their legs while you are getting them dressed!). I work with your baby and their preferences – we do the poses that are comfortable for your baby! Easy – right.

We also start the session with your baby wrapped up, as this will help them feel the most secure and drift off to sleep. This photo below of little Christina all wrapped up in yellow, is one of my favourites from her gallery. I love how she looks like a little sunshine teddy bear. She was so happy here and it allowed her to settle into a nice deep sleep.

The ‘older’ your baby, the more awake they will be, which means I need to be clever in how I move them between set-ups to not wake them up. As a specialised newborn photographer, this is what I am good at! As I have been doing this for almost 10 years now, I have become the ‘master’ at keeping babies sleepy and comfortable.

While mixing up the wraps (and working down to taking them off completely), we can create lots of different looks. How pretty is the delicate knit wrap in the image above!! It gives just enough coverage, while still being able to see all of baby Christina. This lovely knit wrap is made be a prop maker (who has become a dear friend) in Ohio USA – check out all of her hand-knitted props here: Ewe Baby

There is a ‘plus’ to your baby being more awake! We can take ‘awake’ shots with older newborn babies. These images allow us to capture cute and funny expressions which shows your baby’s amazing personality! Look at all of the brilliant expressions of little Christina – aren’t they just the BEST!