PHOTOGRAPHING YOUR NEWBORN AT HOME, THE FIRST FEW WEEKS

The first few weeks go fast, and some of it happens at 3am when no photographer is around. The good news is your phone is enough for almost all of it, if you know a few things. Here’s what I’d tell any new parent.

Don’t wait for them to look perfect, or for the house to be tidy, or for a better moment. The moment in front of you is the keeper.

USE THE WINDOW, NOT THE FLASH

Turn the flash off and leave it off. Turn the ceiling lights off too. Carry your baby to the biggest window in the house and let the daylight do the work. Soft, indirect light is what you want, not direct sun on their face. Pick the one where the sun isn’t coming in directly. If there is a bed or sofa, then it’s the perfect platform to lay the baby on.

Point baby’s head toward the window. Light falling down the face looks gentle. Light coming up from below the chin looks like a horror film. This one change improves more photos than anything else on this list.

SHOOT AFTER A FEED

A milk-drunk baby is a cooperative baby. Right after a feed, they’re sleepy, curly, and happy to be handled. In the first two weeks they still fold into those curled-up newborn shapes. That window closes faster than you’d think, so get the sleepy curled photos early. You won’t get those shapes back. That’s the whole reason to photograph now and not wait for a tidier week.

GET CLOSE, THEN CLOSER

Fingers wrapped around your thumb. Ears. Lips. The hair whorl. Eyelashes. These details change within weeks and you will forget them.

Don’t push the phone right up to their face, phone lenses distort up close. Stand back a touch and use the optical zoom, take the shot, and crop in afterwards. If your phone has portrait mode, this is where it earns its keep.

CLEAR THE FRAME

Before you press the button, look at everything that isn’t the baby. Move the laundry, the monitor cord, the muslin with the stain. Lay baby on a plain blanket or sheet. A clean frame makes a phone photo look deliberate instead of accidental. A clean frame isn’t about being fussy. It just gets everything out of the way of the thing you actually care about.

PUT YOURSELVES IN THE PHOTOS

A newborn alone shows a baby. A newborn in dad’s hands shows how impossibly small they were. Get the scale shots, baby on a chest, head in a palm, tiny hand on a big finger.

And hand the phone over. Mums, this means you. Tired is fine, pyjamas are fine. In ten years nobody will care how you looked, but everyone will care that you’re in them.

THE ONE TO SET UP ON PURPOSE

Most of this guide is about catching what happens. This is the one worth arranging.

Sit upright on the couch, back against the armrest, legs stretched along the seat. Rest the baby on your legs facing you, held safe. Now play with their fingers, talk to them, let them look at you. Get whoever has the phone to shoot from slightly above.

Don’t look at the camera. Look at the baby. The photo is the two of you looking at each other, not you smiling at the lens.

TAKE TOO MANY

Yawns, stretches and squishy faces last about a second. Use burst mode, hold the button down, and delete the misses later. Ten bad frames around one good one is how the good one gets caught. The keeper is almost never the one you planned. It’s the half-second after.

THE BLACK AND WHITE RESCUE

Newborn skin is blotchy, peely and sometimes a bit yellow or red. That’s normal, and it’s also why a photo can feel off without you knowing why. Flick it to black and white. It hides the skin chaos and leaves the shapes and the feeling. Some of your best photos are hiding behind a black and white filter.

REAL BEATS POSED

Feeding. The bath. Asleep on a chest while someone watches TV. Big sister staring into the bassinet. These are the photos that will undo you in twenty years, not the posed ones. If a moment makes you feel something, photograph it as it is.

ONE SAFETY NOTE

Never put your baby anywhere they could roll, slip or fall for the sake of a photo. The propped-up poses you see online are sometimes not safe and can hurt your baby. A sleeping baby flat on a safe surface, or on your legs with your faces looking at each other, photographs beautifully and needs no tricks.

PRINTING THEM

Don’t leave them on your phone. The ones that get looked at are on a wall or in a book you can hand around.

For a book you make yourself, go to zno.com. I’ve printed through most of the self-print places over the years and ZNO is the best value for the quality, a hardcover under $200, laid out yourself in their online software. If you want heirloom-grade, printers like Queensberry are trade-only, ordered through a photographer.

BACK THEM UP TONIGHT

Not someday. Tonight. Turn on your phone’s automatic cloud backup and check it’s actually running. These are the photos you’d run back into a burning house for, and they currently live on a device that gets dropped near toilets.

That’s it. Take more than feels reasonable, keep the ones that feel like them.

— Tony

NEWBORN BLOG