newborn PORTRAITS information

Getting the best from your Newborn portraits session

Please read the following information carefully and complete the short form below.

The best newborn portraits depend on baby being as relaxed and sleepy as possible during the session.

Ideally, baby will have been awake for a period of time immediately before the session, so is very sleepy when we begin.

If baby arrives at the tail end of a 4hr nap, ready for “wakey time” it will be much more difficult for us to create the super-sleepy newborn portraits we want to take for you!

Newborn mini-sessions Sussex

We recommend avoiding any spicy foods like chilli & spices, and other foods such as chocolate, caffeine, dairy products, herbal soups or excessive ginger… or basically, anything that may cause gas in babies, leading to an unsettled sleep and portrait session!

Please do be sure to bring a newborn dummy with you…

We won’t use it unless we need to… but even if you don’t usually use them, we strongly recommend bringing one. One time really won’t hurt – but it can mean all the difference between getting a beautiful series of pictures, or a continual struggle if baby isn’t settled!

A dummy can quite literally shave hours off your shoot time, and lead to a far more successful shoot – meaning more pictures for you – than if we need to continually soothe an unsettled baby – so we strongly recommend bringing one with you. 

A bath or sponge bath (refer to advice by your midwife) before coming to us can also help clear any patches of dry, flaky skin so they won’t show up in your portraits.

This can also help stimulate and keep baby awake prior to the session… so he or she is more sleepy when it’s portrait time: a double bonus for great photos!

We’ll be stripping baby down to just a nappy immediately before we fit any of our gorgeous newborn outfits or wraps for your photos… which means we’ll need to undress him or her with as little disturbance as possible.

Please dress baby in something that doesn’t need to be pulled over the head to remove. A button-down onesie is perfect. This will help us begin your session as soon as possible.

We’ve found that bottle-fed babies almost always sleep more soundly compared to breast-fed during a newborn shoot (with formula milk making them the most sleepy of all) so if you’re happy to use formula milk please do bring this along.

If you’re not happy using formula milk, we recommend bringing expressed milk so we’ll know baby is getting a good feed and not just ‘comfort feeding’ on the breast.

If you do need to breastfeed during the newborn shoot, that’s fine but we may find baby doesn’t sleep so deeply, so the poses we can offer may be less varied… but we’ll still work with him or her to get the best photos we can for you.

When shooting newborns, our studio is quite warm – so we recommend wearing light clothing, even in winter. We often wear shorts!

 A newborn shoot lasts between 1 to 3 hours, depending on the package you’ve booked so you’re welcome to bring along your own snacks/drinks if you want to – and a phone, ipad or book if you want.

In order to minimise disruption and distractions, we do not allow customers to take their own pictures during our portrait sessions.

If not included in your newborn shoot, we recommend leaving older children with a babysitter during your newborn shoot if at all possible.

A newborn session can take quite some time to complete (and is really not very exciting for young children).

And of course, our aim is always to keep disturbances to a minimum while we photograph your sleeping newborn!

baby photography shoot

Newborn session details form

The Birches
Mill Lane
Copthorne
RH103HW

As you enter Mill Lane, you’ll find horse fields to your right, and our home is the 6th drive on the left. Usually, there aren’t any cars parked on the lane itself… but if there are any, then it’s most likely our house! 

Please park on, or across the drive in front of the gates. Don’t worry about blocking us in – we’re not going anywhere..!

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