But how do you market yourself, you ask? Well that’s a good question. Newborn baby photography is a type of photography that many people don’t normally think about hiring a professional to do the job. This is ok though, it is not impossible or even too terribly difficult to break into the market. Parents love their kids and a large portion of their income is spent on their kids. This is especially true at the beginning when they first have a baby because it is all new and exciting. The goal here is NOT to take advantage of parents, but rather this is just something to understand about the market. Parents love their kids and will do a lot for them. I’ll repeat, parents love their kids and will do a lot for them. You don’t have to feel like you’re taking advantage of the parents. Instead, you can understand that they actually want to have adorable photos of their babies, just like you do! You are providing a very valuable service to them.

I suggest putting out an ad in the newspaper telling the world that you are willing to do baby photography. You can create a website promoting your services. You can tell friends and family that you can do baby photography. Once people know about it and see the wonderful work that you produce, you’ll start to get a trickle of requests, which will in turn turn into a downpour of requests. Word of mouth is one of the best ways to advertise, it’s free! Just make sure that you keep your clients happy by providing excellent service and wonderful customer support. Bend over backwards to do anything they ask and be very friendly. This will allow them to highly recommend you to other people and will provide you with a steady stream of clients.

The most important part to all of this is to make sure you are having fun. If it’s no fun for you to shoot other people’s babies, then don’t do it! Just stay at home and enjoy photographing your own babies. If you do it right however, it can be very fulfilling to photograph other people and their babies.

Baby photography gives you a lot of options for uses of your baby photos. Parents and grandparents all love the photos and love showing them off to friends and family. Prints make great gifts as well. Is it grandma’s birthday coming up? Well just print out half a dozen photos of your baby and you’ll make her day! You might even consider making some sort of collage of the photos and write things about the different events that the photos represent.

Probably the biggest reason to make photos of your baby though is for yourself. You’ll be able to remember what life was like when you had a baby if you take photos of it and document it. If you don’t this special time in your life is going to be lost and it’s not something that can be replaced. You’re going to want to back up your photos as well just to make sure that nothing happens to them. Just make sure you print some though. Holding an actual photograph is probably the most satisfying way to view a photo. Have fun when you’re doing this whole process though, there’s nothing quite like photographing your baby and you can definitely make a great experience out of it and have something precious to show for your hard work.

If the baby is very mobile it is hard to use a tripod because the point of a tripod is to make images steady and sharp. If the baby is always moving around you will be defeating the point of the tripod because you’ll always be picking the tripod up and moving it. You might as well just have to move the camera and not have to worry about a tripod too.

On the other hand, if the baby or babies that you are shooting are fairly stationary, you’ll have a lot of good uses for a tripod. Tripods are meant to provide you with a way to get sharper, crisper photos. You won’t need to worry about the images becoming blurry due to you shaking the camera. In fact the use of a tripod is advised for all types of photography if you are shooting something that is fairly still. It just eliminates a lot of camera blurring issues that you might have.

One great thing about using a tripod is that you will have your hands free to play with the baby, or hold toys as necessary. You’ll need to use a remote shutter release tool with your camera. This is a great way to remove the camera from the equation and make the whole experience a little more natural for everyone involved in the process. Part of creating photographs is to make them look natural and it’s a lot easier on everyone if the camera isn’t always right there in the front, between you and your subjects.

As I’ve already mentioned though, if you’re shooting babies or slightly older toddlers that are going to be moving around, your baby photography is going to be a lot easier if you’re not using a tripod. Why would you want to carry around a long heavy metal thing with the camera when all you really need to carry is the camera itself? You’ll find that you’ll miss a lot of shots because of the cumbersome tripod.

In the end you’re just going to need to use your own good judgment on whether or not you should be using a tripod. I typically don’t use one because I find that I have more control if I have the camera in my hand. I definitely know that there is a place for a tripod however, and that cannot be overlooked.

After you have purchased your camera, you’ll need to think about what lens you should get. I suggest you get a lens that has the ability to give you shallow depth of field. This will create the effect of blurring out the background while keeping just your baby in focus. This is a great way to bring more attention to where you want the attention to be focused, right on your baby!

There are quite a lot of options for you to choose from. I am a Canon camera user, so I will give you advice based on the Canon system. If you have lots of money, you could get the Canon 85mm 1.2L lens. This is a very expensive lens costing around $1400 or more. It makes beautiful images so if money is no object, or if you plan to make all your money with this lens, buy it.

Otherwise, another great option for far less money would be the Canon 50mm 1.8 lens. This lens is very cheap at less than $100. Prices will vary but you can find it usually around $80. You might wonder if a lens this cheap can produce good images, but the truth is that yes it can. Images are extremely sharp and you’ll be amazed by the quality.

A third option that is more middle of the road is the Canon 100mm 2.8 Macro lens. This lens is great because you can use this both as a portrait lens but also as a macro lens. 100mm is a little bit on the long end for a baby photography portrait lens, but it can definitely work. This lens costs around $400, sometimes less. It will be a lot easier to get detail shots of the baby’s eyes or toes because of the macro capability with this lens. This allows for some more creative possibilities that wouldn’t be available with the other choices.

Of course there are many other options to choose from, but that is a good start to give you some unique photos. The key to baby photography is to make your images stand out and most of all, for your enjoyment. The more you practice the better you will be. Good luck!

The area of baby photography however is not without it’s challenges. Babies don’t always like to smile, and when they get slightly older, they can run around pretty quick so it’s hard to capture them. In order to make taking photos of your babies easily, I suggest getting a DSLR. A Digital SLR camera can take photos very quickly and you don’t need to spend any time waiting for the camera to load. It also generally focuses very quickly so you’re sure to get a shot that isn’t out of focus. It’s also smart to buy a flash so that you can get good indoors photos even when the lighting isn’t so good. The on-board camera flash isn’t very good most of the time so I suggest investing in a decent quality flash that can be attached to the hot-shoe on the camera. Most decent flashes can be purchased for less than $200. You can even get a good one for less than $100 if you’re lucky.

After you have all the equipment that you need, it’s good to think about what your background is going to look like. Try to get rid of anything that will be distracting and take away from the photo, or draw interest from your baby. Things like bright toys can definitely detract from the photo and make it less interesting. You can place you baby on a bunch of neutral toned pillows or an interesting looking table. It’s also great to get creative by going to the beach or some other place that’s different than normal. I’ll go into more detail on some ideas for cool places to shoot your baby in later posts.

Another great idea is to try and get someone to help you with the photo shoot. Babies sometimes need to be entertained and if you are worried about setting your camera settings you can’t always devote all your attention to the baby. This makes it wise to have someone helping you. Also since you’ll have someone helping you, you’ll be able to make sure and get every precious moment, instead of possibly missing out because you’re worried about the baby falling or getting in to trouble.

More to come on baby photography in the future!