Graham’s Newborn Portraits {over the course of SO many days!}

It gives me great pleasure to share my little boy’s newborn portraits with you. As you may have figured out by the title of this post, I could not stop photographing him! Multiple newborn sessions are one of the perks of being both his Mom and his photographer. 😉

I was anxious to take his photos and attempted it for the first time on day 5. But I had learned a few things from photographing my other two boys as newborns (Owen and Marshall), and decided not to overdo it on my first attempt with Graham. I went into it knowing that I’d photograph him on more than one day. I planned just a few setups for this first day and had him wrapped for all of them. Thankfully, he was cooperative.

Naturally, with Easter right around the corner, I HAD to incorporate a bunny setup, and I love how this one turned out!

Having even just those few images enabled me to relax enough to wait… 4 days… 4 days and then I went for round two! LOL  I had purchased this cute little prop outfit for him and wanted to be sure I had a chance to use it before he outgrew it. So here is my little guy on day 9:

His smile!!!Newborns and their hilarious lack of eye control! LOL

Having 2 sessions with him complete, I was pretty happy with what I had so far. But I was still anxious to get one of all three of my boys together. So on day 11, I went for it. Now let me just be frank… photographing young children is no easier when they’re your own. I hear so often, “You must have so many great pictures of your kids.” …nope! Not really! LOL

I know several photographers that have beautiful images of their children posed together- I don’t know if they are truly that cooperative, or if they too worked some photoshop magic. All I do know, is that getting a 4 year old, a 2 year old, and a newborn to cooperate in unison was a seemingly impossible task for me. Which is why my appreciation for composite images has grown tremendously. A little work in photoshop resulted in these two images of my boys:

If you are unfamiliar with a composite image- it is basically just two images that are overlapped in photoshop to look like one. So in reality, Graham was never in a bucket flanked by his big brothers. Because I really didn’t trust them not to tip it over- SAFETY ALWAYS COMES FIRST!  I took a photo of the boys with an empty bucket and overlapped it with a photo of Graham alone in the bucket. That combination resulted in the image above and made my mama heart happy. 🙂 Once I put Marshall down for his afternoon nap, I headed back down to the studio and managed to get my beanbag shots of Graham as well as a few others. Oh, how I love all his little details…The profile shot is one of my favorites!The little white dots (milia) on the nose are one of the most obvious signs of a baby’s newness. It actually made me sad when I looked at his face one day and realized they were gone! (insert ugly mom tears here) I’d say a good third of this hair has already fallen out and the rest has lightened significantly. I’m sure someday he’ll look back at his newborn photos and wonder who that dark haired baby is. 🙂When I look at this image below, compared to his eyes-open photo from day 5, I can’t get over how different he already looks!I know I already posted one picture of his lil toes, but seriously… baby feet are the cutest!I love the simplicity of this tucked in pose. I added in his lovey for good measure. I’ll be photographing him month-to-month with this little lion beside him. After that third day of photos, I thought I was finished… until I wasn’t. He was changing so much, it was like I was watching that newborn period quickly fading away. I wanted to try to capture what little bit might be left. And so, on day 27 of his life, he humored me with this precious face…
…and then drifted off to sleep. I’m going to try not to be overly hormonal when I say that I am in love with this little boy and so blessed to be his mama. As a newborn photographer it is very hard to resist the urge to try every pose and every prop on your own newborn. I know I really don’t need more newborn images of him. But, I have a live-in model, so… practice makes perfect, right? 🙂

I’m excited to be back from maternity leave and anxious to get some more newborns in the studio. If you or someone you know is expecting and interested in a newborn session- please contact me for more information!