Blog

The way we, as Photographers, style a newborn session is one of the best ways to separate ourselves from others in our area and also help us form a consistent brand. It’s imperative that we listen to our client’s desires while also staying true to ourselves as artists. Prior to all of my newborn sessions, I meet with the expectant parents and talk about styling to ensure the overall aesthetic of the session suits their personal style and home decor. This leads me to my first tip on styling newborn sessions!

 

Regardless of the genre of photography that you specialize in, creating a visual story is always the key fundamental to producing beautiful photography.  Elements like lighting, the right pose and expression can make or break your images, but the story can be a guiding force that helps the subject find that expression or helps you to guide the pose and lighting to produce great results.  One of the first building blocks to establishing the story is the backdrop you photograph against.  It isn’t the only element that defines story, but it is the first key element that immediately sets the visual expectation of where we are (as a viewing audience) and where we might go through your series of images.

For years I have tried many different ways of hanging and shooting my professional backdrops. These include the good ole’ backdrop stand, mounting a curtain rod to the wall and clamping my drops to that, long heavy duty Velcro strips on the wall with bits of the opposing strips on the back corners of my drops, and finally, what I currently use Metal Strips with Magnets.

Photographers often discuss the challenges of variety during sessions with little ones during their studio milestone sessions. Learning which poses work best through the years (age dependent of course) and growing my backdrop collection have helped me improve the variety of images in my milestone sessions. 

This is an exciting, overwhelming time for you! There are so many decisions to make all at once! Where do you begin? When there are so many steps to take, it can be hard to know where to step first. But don’t worry, I’ve got your back! Here are 5 areas to focus on when you’re just getting started:

I recently had the pleasure of shooting a demo of High Impact on Small Drops at the Intuition Backgrounds Booth in the IMAGING USA EXPO. Talk about small spaces. We had about 6-7 feet to work with between the backdrop and where I stood. On top of that we were surrounded by wonderful people joining to watch us work. Here are the THREE key points we touched on.