Baby Starr | Classic Black & White Newborn Portraits of Adelaide Olivia

I'm savoring this stage that we're in with our baby girl. I want to remember the newborn squeaks and grunts. How she stretches her little body, arches her back, and curls her hands up by her face. The way that her tiny fingers grasp my pinky and hold on tight. How her legs fit together perfectly like two puzzle pieces when she tucks them up together and fold them across her tummy. I find myself pulling out my phone more and more often to capture videos of this newborn goodness, the precious little mannerisms and reflexes that I know she'll soon outgrow but that I don't want to forget anytime soon. And of course I can't help but document it all on my camera as well, beautiful portraits that I know I'll look back on years from now and feel a yearning to go back to those sleep-deprived newborn weeks when she snuggled up so peacefully on my chest and her breathing synced with mine.

When capturing Adelaide's newborn portraits, I wanted to document a few that were raw and natural. Perfectly unposed. The black & white images and the clean white background keep the focus on the baby, and all of the sweet little details are front and center.

Some photographers like to refer to this as "baby led posing," and that's exactly what happens to capture images like this. You let the baby run the show, and you let them curl up, stretch, sigh, and settle into the comfy positions that they naturally find comforting because it's how they were curled up in the womb. As the photographer, you can guide them a little bit by wrapping a swaddle around them or gently bringing their arm in when it floats out to the side, but you capture all of that newborn goodness and the natural movements and expressions that they make.

These are a few of my favorite sleepy, unposed newborn portraits from Adelaide's first few weeks, and just looking at them now already has me missing those early days when she was so light and tiny in my arms. It really is true that it goes by so quickly, and it's hard to believe it until you're experiencing it that you can miss something already even as it's happening right before your very eyes.

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Vivian Jane's 3 Month Milestone Portraits | Saratoga Springs Baby Photographer

With the launch of our new Baby Plan & Milestone Sessions in 2018, I am so excited to see so many of my newborn clients return to the studio for their milestone portraits throughout their baby's first year!

I first met Vivian Jane during her at-home lifestyle newborn session.  Her parents mentioned then that they would be doing a traditional 100 day celebration for their daughter, and so of course we started planning her 100-day portraits!  We added a bit of sparkle to this sweet girl's session to fit the mood of the celebration, and her sweet smiles just lit up the room!

Her mama brought the cutest little knit outfit & beret, and this sweet 3 month old looked like a little French girl with that beret perched on her head just so!  The white bed is always a classic look in our milestone sessions, and I love how simply it complements this adorable baby girl.  

So, what is a good milestone to photograph?  Honestly, the first year flies so quickly and you're going to want to remember all of them!  Here are a few of my favorites to photograph during our milestone sessions:

• Tummy time
• Smiling
• Before the first teeth come in
• Celebration of the first tooth
• Discovering their toes 
• Sitting up unassisted
• Crawling
• Standing
• Walking

Celebrating 6 Months | Lila's Floral & Hearts Milestone Session with Saratoga Springs Baby Photographer

Lila's mom & dad wanted to celebrate her first 6 months with a perfectly whimsical & girly session filled with pretty little details, soft colors, flowers, and hearts.  Of course, they came to just the right photographer because I LOVE creating sets like that here in our Saratoga Springs studio!

This sweet baby girl was so happy to show off her new sitting skills, and she loved playing with the hearts in our little Valentine's set-up.  We also created this set-up to honor CHD awareness and her personal medical victories, and I love that we were able to incorporate something so special that meant a lot to her parents during the session.

But the very best part of Lila's session?  These SMILES!  Only her mama was able to get her to laugh like this, and this beautiful baby girl couldn't take her eyes off of her mom.  She adores her, and that shows so clearly in her expressions in these portraits!

Our Baby Plan is the perfect way to celebrate your baby's milestones throughout the first year!  Come to the studio for the first smiles, tummy time, sitting up, crawling, the first tooth... there are truly so many possibilities!  

Quinn's 3 Month Milestone Session | Saratoga Springs Baby Photographer

I love watching our Baby Plan babies grow!  Quinn Madlina first visited me in the studio a few months ago for her newborn session, and then she came back for her three-month milestone portraits!
 

This sweet baby girl is such a beauty, and I loved seeing how much she had grown!  She's getting so strong and really rocked her tummy time, but her favorite and most comfortable spot was laying on her back and looking up at her daddy, who got all the best smiles from his little girl! 

We used the same headband from her newborn session and a soft pink blanket that was so beautiful on her.

Of course, I love all of the creams & whites with our milestone babies because they are so classically beautiful and simple.  Quinn cozied up in one of our handmade knit rompers, and her tiny new earrings stole the show with just a hint of sparkle in her ears.

Milestone sessions are the perfect opportunity to capture a few seasonal portraits, and we used a nice holiday plaid for Quinn to celebrate the season!

Milestone sessions are best around 3-4 months (tummy time & back), 6-10 months (sitting up unassisted, clapping, smiling, and crawling), and of course the birthday cake smash between 10-13 months!

A Bathtub Splash after the Cake Smash - Saratoga Springs NY Baby Photographer

We have the most adorable new prop in the studio, and I think you're going to LOVE it!  It is simple, classic, and just perfect for our littlest clients! 

Just look at this adorable baby-sized bathtub.  Riley LOVED using it after her cake smash session for a little SPLASH (with a rubber ducky, of course)!

At this age, I love capturing all of the little details that make your baby so beautiful and unique.  Thick eyelashes.  Beautiful curls that are just starting to take shape.  Perfect little lips.  Finger dimples.  And those adorable leg rolls that you just want to squish and cuddle.

Many babies spend the happiest part of their day splishing & splashing in the bathtub.  For them, it's a playground filled with so many giggles and the biggest smiles.  Riley, of course, adored her bath time and she made the biggest splash!  

Huge smiles.  Lots of happy squeals.  And non-stop laughter as she played with her rubber duckies.  

Are you ready to book your SMASH & SPLASH?  What about a petite session with just a baby bath?  Email me and let's chat to plan your baby's perfect session together!
 

Sleepy Newborn Photos - Saratoga Springs & Boston Newborn Photographer

Ask any newborn photographer -- there is nothing we love more than a sleepy, cuddly newborn baby!  Those little baby yawns that come right before they slip into what we lovingly call a "milk drunk" state of sleep are the best!  

So why do photographers love sleepy newborn babies so much?  Well, they are much easier to settle into a pose without stretching or startling themselves awake.  For a baby that is just a week or two old, when they are awake they typically want to eat.  Of course, you didn't hire a newborn photographer to capture dozens of photos of your baby eating, so we like a baby to have a full belly and be nice and settled during their session.

When a newborn baby is in a deep sleep during a studio session, it's easy to move them from the beanbag to buckets and other small props to curl them up inside of.  

This also gives your photographer the chance to really slow down and zoom in on all of the details that you don't want to forget -- their perfect pout, the flaky newborn skin on their hands, their tiny toes, and that thin layer of downy newborn hair on their back.

Plus, sleepy newborn smiles are OH-SO-AMAZING!!!

But do newborn babies need to be asleep during their newborn sessions?
No, of course not!  

I actually love it when they're awake for a few shots so that we can capture their sparkly eyes and intense gaze.  Check out yesterday's blog post filled with so many of
our favorite awake newborn images from recent sessions!
 

Wide Awake Newborn Portraits - Saratoga Springs & Boston Newborn Photographer

I'm going to let you in on a little secret...

Whether it's a lifestyle newborn session at home, or a newborn session here in my Saratoga Springs studio, it's not always guaranteed that the baby will fall asleep!  

Of course, newborn sessions go much more smoothly (and quickly!) when the fresh new baby is asleep most of the time.  We're able to pose the baby into those adorable little curled up poses, wrap them in swaddles, unwrap them, and move them from one setup to another without disturbing them.  

But sometimes, babies are curious little things and they like to see everything that is going on around them -- I swear they must be wondering who this girl with the camera is!  So when we have awake babies during a newborn session, we go with the flow and capture their sparkling eyes and their powerful gaze.  And we hope that they eventually fall asleep by using the million-and-one tricks that I have up my sleeve as a newborn photographer to get tiny little babies to fall into Dreamland!

I do love it when we get those wide-eyed shots during our newborn sessions, though!  This typically happens more often during our lifestyle sessions at home, and it's a great opportunity to capture some portraits in their crib, and cuddles with mom & dad.  If we're bringing siblings in (especially toddlers) that is always much easier with an asleep newborn, though!

So many beautiful little babies!  Check back on the blog tomorrow for another post with a few of our favorite SLEEPY newborn shots from recent sessions!

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Did you know that the best time to book your newborn session is in the second or early in the third trimester?  We are now booking newborns for August, September, October, and November, and I would love to plan the perfect session with you!  

Photographer Education Post: Lessons Learned from a Failed Hard Drive

The unthinkable happened to me.  Every photographer’s worst nightmare:  my external hard drive bit the dust.  It was a Friday afternoon, and I had just sat down to edit my very last session after an incredibly productive week filled with too many sessions to count, travel, and lots and lots of editing.  I was in such a good mood because my to do list was dwindling right before my eyes.  I only had one thing left to cross off on the entire list, and it was to edit one final session from the week…  
 

And then my hard drive failed me.


My hard drive tipped over on its side, right on top of my desk.  It didn’t fall off the desk, it didn’t shatter, it didn’t get dropped down a flight of stairs.  It just tipped over, but it was as awful as it would have been if I had dropped it out a window.  It started emitting those dreadful clicking noises and my computer didn’t recognize it was plugged in anymore. 

I panicked.

I tried restarting it.

I yelled.  

I tried plugging it into a different computer.

I definitely screamed a few choice words.

And I was almost in tears when I called customer service.

But you know what?  Only 48 hours later and I still had no idea yet if the data recovery people would be able to salvage anything on my hard drive.  During those 48 hours I decided to be proactive and fix/save/re-do everything that I could.  So that two days after the incident, I had already resolved everything that had sent me into a tailspin when the hard drive crashed. After all that worrying, everything worked out completely fine in the end.  So what happened???

This tiny little catastrophe has forced me to look at my workflow and make a few changes.  I have figured out a much safer system for backing up my files to hopefully prevent this from ever happening again.  And honestly, I went the easiest route possible because this is the most tedious part of my workflow and one that I would rather avoid — give me all of the pretty creative things, because I just don’t have the patience to deal with technical tidbits.  

After my experience with my failed hard drive, I wanted to share a post on what to do when your hard drive ever fails you -- let's be honest, it's not IF your hard drive fails, it's WHEN.  You always think, "That will never happen to me."  But it will happen.  And I want to share with you how you can prepare your workflow now to prevent a total meltdown and loss of files, clients, and sales when this inevitably occurs.

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First I have to say, there is not one “right” or “wrong” way to do anything.  This method works for me right now, and I’m sure I will change it as time goes by.  Take what you’d like from this post, and I hope it helps you take a good, long look at your workflow to see where any gaps might be so that you always have a solid backup plan in place.

Prepare for the worst case scenario with every single session.  You never know what is going to happen — your hard drive could tip over on your desk and just stop working on a Friday afternoon like mine did!  Follow these tips to always keep your images safe! 

Tip 1:  Don’t reformat those SD cards yet!

Keep all images on your memory card until you have delivered the final gallery to your clients.  This saved me.  Luckily I still had every single recent session on my SD cards so that I could go back, transfer the RAW files again, cull, and edit.  Yes, I wasted time having to go back and do all of this work again, but I was so grateful that those images were still there.

Tip 2: Have a backup to your backup.

I own two external hard drives where I am storing all of my 2017 sessions.  Honestly, I didn’t used to do this, but a friend walked me through her storage process last year after I had spent a very, very long time worrying about what would happen if my one lonely hard drive ever malfunctioned.  So now I have two just for this year, and they are set up to mirror image one another once a week.  My problem this time was that they hadn’t mirror imaged each other yet the week this all went down, so all the work I had done that week was gone.  Clearly I need to change that setting and make it happen more often now!  Once I get my hard drive back from the manufacturer, this will be the first thing I do!

Tip 3:  And then back them all up online. 

I had been putting off setting up an online storage account that a friend kept recommending to me, and the instant my hard drive failed I was kicking myself for not doing it sooner.  But then I realized that a few of my “missing” galleries were actually saved online in Shootproof because my clients had requested online access for a few days to finalize their orders that we discussed in person.  This was a total lifesaver, and I had all of those high-res, beautifully edited JPEGs ready to download because they were backed up in Shootproof.  I plan on upgrading my account to the unlimited version, and I now upload every single gallery to Shootproof just for storage after I edit the session.  First I save them to my external drive, then I backup to the backup external drive, then I upload to Shootproof.  They are in THREE locations.  Since I do IPS, I rarely use these galleries for clients to view, but now it will serve as an online library for me in case I ever need it again.

Tip 4:  Allow yourself some grace.

You know the saying, “under promise and over deliver”?  In this industry, many of us live by this motto, and I truly believe it is so important to always wow your clients every step of the way.  

So when we tell our clients their images will be ready in two weeks, we’re really trying to set up their gallery reveal for 1-1.5 weeks from now so that they feel like we made their experience our top priority.  I do this all the time with every single client!  But sometimes you need to build in a buffer on the calendar and allow yourself a few extra days just in case you need to edit those images again, or in case you order proofs from your lab and there is a delay in shipping.  

When my hard drive crashed, I had not yet started setting up my gallery reveal appointments for the sessions I had finished editing that week.  This gave me a little breathing room when it came time to re-edit everything.  Thankfully the clients still enjoyed their gallery reveal sessions n the promised amount of time, with just as many images as they would have received the first time around.  My portrait clients will never even know that there was a glitch on my end because I was able to fix it in two days by following all of the advice I’m including in this post.  Yes, I had to give up half of my weekend to recover everything, but now it’s all done and I can breathe easy again.  Allow yourself some grace.  This way you can still over deliver to your clients and continue to wow them every step of the way, even if the unthinkable happens.  

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If you follow steps similar to those above, you should be all set if your hard drive ever does crash, malfunction, tip over, or just fail.  But if you find yourself in my situation where you are panicked, possibly yelling, and wondering how in the world you’re ever going to work through all of your sessions again, here is one other tip that sped up my re-editing process and truly saved me hours of work as I went through these sessions for the second time.  

Make culling & editing easier the second time around with 2 computer screens.

Since I had already chosen my final images the first time around, I simply opened Lightroom on my laptop, where all of the “missing” images were still able to be viewed, just not downloaded or edited.  Then I opened Lightroom on my desktop with the new RAW files and marked them one at a time based off of the file numbers that I could view on my other screen.  This cut my culling time down immensely, and I was able to re-cull all of that week’s galleries in record time.

Same thing for editing!  I had made a couple of very particular tweaks to my images because of difficult lighting or skin tones — anyone that works with newborns knows that a lot of work goes into correcting the skin tone of a baby who has jaundice!  Rather than reinvent the wheel and edit everything from scratch, I was able to view the changes in the Develop module of Lightroom on my laptop, and make those exact same changes on one image at a time on the images on my desktop.  I still had to go in and do certain tedious tasks in Photoshop, but because I had already done them once before this week, they were very fresh in my mind and they didn’t take long at all.

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So there you go!  I hope you never need these tips, but if you do, I hope you'll find them helpful!  Enjoy a few more blog posts written just for photographers here:

A Month of Content Ideas for Social Media

A Guest Blog Post by Jessi Metzger: Why Work with a Mentor?

Why I Decided to Invest in my Baby Photography Business

4 Essential Props for a Baby Photography Studio

A Springtime Milestone Session for a Baby Girl in our Saratoga Springs Studio

Oh my goodness, you guys!!  Just look at Hazel!  Isn't she the cutest bright-eyed baby girl?

Baby Hazel came to the studio for a beautiful springtime session.  I am so excited to finally bring out the pastel colors, all of the flowers, and a few adorable new outfits now that winter is over and we're getting ready for lots of springtime loveliness here in our Saratoga Springs portrait studio.  

This sweet baby girl absolutely rocked her portrait session with her Sweet Ivie headbands and our Photographer Rising Lavender Fields backdrop, painted by the talented Heidi Hope.  

At seven months old, she is at one of my favorite ages to capture on camera.  The sitter stage is full of personality as babies are sitting independently, discovering their toes when laying on their backs, and not quite crawling away from the camera yet.  In a few months she'll be crawling and walking around the room, but this stage of discovery and awe is always such a fun one to capture on camera since it is so fleeting.

As I get ready for spring here in the studio, I am loving finding new ways to incorporate greenery into our sessions.  This beautiful eucalyptus garland with blush pink roses is my favorite addition to our prop closet, and I love it against the cream wall and floors.  

Plus, doesn't Hazel look amazing with the Sweet Ivie headband that coordinates so perfectly with her dress and backdrop?

We are now booking springtime sessions here at our Saratoga Springs studio!  We have plenty of outfits, headbands, diaper covers, and wraps for your baby to enjoy a fully-styled session with Nicole Starr Photography!