Newborn Baby Photography Tips | Complete Studio Guide

In this post, we’re gonna talk about newborn baby photography. We will get to know its meaning and some tips like choosing camera and its setting with lighting setup, most common props, dress and poses ideas.

As you know, there are different types of photography. If you are a beginner and want to be a professional photographer then check out every photography tips on my site.

Let’s take a look on current photography type.

Table of Contents

What is Newborn Photography?

Newborn baby photography is a branch of photography tree that focus on taking pics of newborn babies, whether a girl or boy.

Age of a baby could be from some days to 1 year. By capture babies pics, you can store your baby’s lovely memories in photos. But you should choose age of 1-14 days. In these days, babies are so much cute and sweet looking.

While clicking newborn’s photos, you should have to take some steps carefully for baby’s safety. This photoshoot should be done with parents, for take care of baby.

In further reading, we will see some useful tips like how to setup camera and lighting for photo shoot.

After that we will learn what equipment and other things we will need here. In the end, we will see some ideas photos of newborn.

Camera Settings For Newborn Photography

Before shooting baby photos, you must have to set your camera for this type of photography.

You should choose DSLR or mirror less camera for this photoshoot as digital and advanced camera are being using now a days. But this doesn’t means that you need very costly camera. You can buy an affordable camera from range starting $300.

In case you are at pro level and want to use high quality camera, then it would be best for shooting babies pics.

Here are some basic camera settings for baby photoshoot.

First of all, choose manual mode in your camera
If you want to focus just only on baby then aperture should be on lowest value, so that you will focus on baby, background will be blurred
Use high ISO when there is no natural light in room
When natural light is available, you can use low ISO
Don’t use flash because flash can harm baby’s eyes
White balance is depend on the temperature of light in setup
Best lens could be 35mm or 50mm

You can learn full camera setting for Baby Photoshoot on Expertphotography blog.

Newborn Baby Photography Lighting Setup

If you love natural photography, then sunlight is best source for giving light in your newborn photography. You can choose location near window in your room or studio and just open the window and get natural sunlight.

But if there is no window in your room or studio, then you can use man made lighting setup for shooting adorable photos of child.

Here, I will tell you what you will need for this photo session. Below are some lighting equipment and brief overview about them.

Normal Lights in Studio or Room

First of all it is common that you have normal lights in your room or studio. But common doesn’t mean cheap lights which you have bought online. You must buy original lights, whether they are costly or very costly. You should not compromise when you are shooting professional photos.

Continuous Lights

Continuous lights are studio lights that are permanently with you while shooting photos. These lights must be set according to your photo subject direction and must be switched on when you are going to take photos.

Remember again that cheap continuous lights will destroy your photo session. You must buy branded lights, even they are costly.

Strobe Lights

Strobe lights are the lights in your studio setup, which are connected to your camera with the help of triggers and receivers. These lights help in getting smooth images, and will improve sharp images, even in group photo of 3 person (Baby, Mother and Father).

This photo shoot is related to Indoor photography, so you can check out that post for detail view.

Newborn Baby Photography Props and Dress

When we are talking about baby photography, then props are best things that we can use to make amazing photo shoot. There are uncountable number of props in the market. Some examples are basket, umbrella, fish costume, peacock costume, fur blanket, baby chair, head accessory etc.

As props are important, dresses are also important to give better look in this photography. By applying different types of beautiful dress, this photoshoot will be so colorful. There are many varieties of dresses in the market like rabbit dress, bear dress, baby moon dress, baby angel dress etc.

Without props and dresses, newborn baby photography may seem colorless. There are plenty of variety, from which we can choose suitable for our photo session.

Below you can see some examples of props and dress which you can use, and you can use from above list which i have mentioned. Let’s see some example images of props.

Newborn Baby Photoshoot with Parents

Parents are most important as baby in this photoshoot, so we should not forget to take photos of parents with baby. It is very important part of this photography. If we don’t take baby’s pic with parents then this photoshoot will be incomplete.

Let’s see some example images of baby photos with parents.

DIY newborn photography setup

If you are planning to shoot your baby photos yourself then you can do it at your home. All you need just a camera, some beautiful costumes of baby, window in your room by which sunlight can pass, you can buy some props and you just need to learn some tips which are mentioned in this post.

You can also take ideas from photos in this post. Try to copy styles of these pics and make your baby’s photo shoot like professional.

If you can’t afford a camera, then no worry, you can shoot photos by your phone. But your phone’s camera should click at least HD photos, because everyone want to make their baby’s photo session memorable.