Had a lady call me the other day wanting to book a newborn portrait session for her son who was 6 weeks old.

She asked me if I would be willing to do a photo session for her because her baby was not a “newborn”.  I told her that I have 2 types of sessions for newborn babies…NEW ARRIVALS which is a session designed to do newborn portraits of babies between 7 and 12 days old and WELCOME BABY which is a portrait session for babies over 12 days old and up to 4 months old.

She then told me that she had been online looking for a baby photographer here in Edmonton and when she had called a photographer to get information about prices, the photographer told her that her baby was too old to do newborn portraits!  She then told me that the photographer told her she didn’t do any portraits of babies once they were over 2 weeks old because they were no longer newborns.  I had heard this comment before…a couple of years ago I attended a workshop with a well known baby photographer.  Her advice to us was if the babies were over 2 weeks old, not to bother doing the session because it was too much work and the parents probably wouldn’t buy as much.  How crazy is that!

This got me thinking about the whole baby photography movement that has been going on for about 3 years now.  The new style of newborn portraits is all about capturing that brand new baby.  As photographers, we ask the clients to come for their newborn photo session when the baby is between 7 and 12 days old because they are still quite tiny and if we can get them to go to sleep, they usually sleep deep enough that we can pose them in those cute newborn baby poses, naked, with and without hats on, in baskets, etc.

As a photographer, I love the response that these portraits get and yes, once the babies are over 12 days old, I tell clients that we can’t do those types of poses.  This is because once babies hit the 12 day mark, they are not as fetal, they don’t tend to sleep as deeply or as long so posing them can be difficult, especially with the flashes going off every few minutes.  BUT, does that really mean once they hit 12 days old they are no longer a “newborn” and we can’t do portraits of them?  Of course not.

I have to admit, when my children were born the last thing I would have been able to do is do newborn portraits within those first 2 weeks.  With my son, I was completely overwhelmed with being a new parent and with my daughter it was a rough couple of weeks after her arrival.  The really neat thing is that my daughter was about 6 weeks old when I took her “newborn” portraits and those first few portraits were the inspiration and the creation of Little Bums, Fingers and Toes!

And personally…my favorite of the baby portraits sessions I do is my PRECIOUS PARTS session, when the babies are around that 6 month mark.  This session is all about capturing that chubby baby stage and capturing the “parts”…this is a stage we tend to forget as parents because it goes by so quickly!

I have done up a slideshow to show some portraits I have done over the years that are of babies between 2 weeks and 4 months old. Hopefully, this slideshow will show that a baby doesn’t have to be under 2 weeks old to have beautiful portraits done.