How to Take Your Own Baby Photos At Home

 Anyone can create great baby photos at home, rather than having to splurge on expensive professional photo shoots in those early days. It only takes a few simple steps to set up and you can start snapping away in no time, hopefully creating baby photos at home that you love.

In our family, I am usually the one behind the camera, snapping away and capturing the moments. And as much as I love photography, I am in no way a great photographer. Sure I manage some great shots at times and impress even myself, but there is one area of photography that I seem to do well, when I take the time to set up properly.

When my first daughter Lily was born, we paid for a photo shoot when she was around a month old, as well as another family photo shoot when she was a few months old. I wasn't overly happy with either. For the newborn shoot, the biggest issue was the black backdrop, which to me doesn't really suit a baby photo shoot.

Upon launching my own handmade headband and kids clothing business a few months after Lily arrived, I had to learn really quick how to take good product shots. They weren't all great but I was making progress, with some simple backdrop techniques and staging my products.

But this sort of product sells better with a model, and so began my baby photos at home. Some of my favourite photos of Lily have been in the attempt to take product photos, and from there I just got into the habit of taking regular baby photos at home every few months and for special events.

TIPS FOR TAKING YOUR OWN BABY PHOTOS AT HOME

With the arrival of our new daughter, the camera has been busy and there have been a few sessions of baby photos at home and sibling sessions too. So I thought I would share some of my tips.

Utilise the Space You Have

Most of us don't have photo studio set ups at home so we have to work with what we have. Utilise a lounge room or a bedroom if that's what you have. My  most recent photos have been created using our king size bed with a white sheet on, with pillows built up behind to create an overall white space. 

Aim for Natural Light

Having an area with natural soft light spilling in, rather than artificial light or extreme direct sunlight will be your best tool. You will be amazed what a difference it makes having natural light when shooting baby photos at home.

Clear the Clutter

Make sure you remove any distracting items from your background before you start. This is one of my worst habits when snapping candidly, but it makes a huge difference when taking baby photos at home.

Create a Backdrop

For me this has mostly been a couch with tablecloths draped over it and onto the floor. It creates a distraction free background for the photographs and can be changed to suit the colours and theme you want for your photos. Neutral backdrops are perfect.

Happy Baby

Aim to do your baby photography when your baby is in a good mood. Just after a feed or a sleep is best, so they are neither tired or hungry. If they fall asleep during your shoot, that works too. Although I've never been this lucky. For older babies, it can also help to have someone else in the background to get their attention and make them smile because they often become distracted by the big chunky camera pointing at them.

Editing

No matter how great your baby photos at home turn out, chances are they will be even better with a few slight edits on a photo editing software. Personally I use PhotoShop Elements, but there are plenty of other tools available such as Lightroom or free software like Pic Monkey. The main edits I do are to brighten and add a soft light look like you see in professional baby photography.

Baby Photo Ideas

Below are some baby photo ideas from my own baby photos at home sessions with my two daughters.

One of my first successful baby photos at home - just a blue sheet layered over our futon sofa with pillows beneath my daughter for comfort. This became the image for my home made hair accessory business.

More recent - my two girls on our bed in a quick at home photo shoot in their pyjamas. This one makes me laugh just because of the face Violet is pulling.

These two are amongst my favourites of Violet so far - in fact we are using the top one in the frame that will have her feet and hand sculptures in it. We used a professional photo with Lily's and I don't like the photo.

Don't be afraid to experiment with black and white if your image isn't the best lighting or just for something different. This was from a photoshoot I did when Lily was turning one.

And of course the ever popular first birthday smash cake photo session. No need to pay someone to do it for you. This was done in our patio area outside, with a light pink disposable table cloth used as the backdrop, with a quickly made fabric banner. I made the cake myself too. DIY smash cake photo shoot.. easy!

And Christmas photos - you might want to make your own personalised Christmas cards or just for your own memory keeping. You can see my 2014 Christmas shoot photos too.

And for information on my photo editing process using Photoshop Elements, check out this post.

The one thing I can't help you with is getting the baby into those adorable positions you see in newborn baby photography. Try as I might, I couldn't get my daughter to put her arms in the right place... so there were a few face in mattress moments in my attempt, that resembled tummy time more than anything else. I gave up and just rolled her onto her side... and thankfully it worked!

At least you can save money on baby photography by taking your own baby photos at home and if you are really lucky, you may even know someone who is great with a camera to take family photos for you too. Fingers crossed!

Do you get regular family portraits done?

Digital Baby Album Week 21-30

Another Christmas Finished...

Hello all

Hope you had a fabulous Christmas yesterday to those of you who are from my side of the world or are enjoying your festivities today for anyone on a later time difference. I enjoyed a great Christmas Eve and Christmas day surrounded by loved ones, with lots of good memories and food.

Lily slept a lot of Christmas day after a restless night Christmas eve. Perhaps she was hoping to spot Santa on her first Christmas lol Either way, I started the day yesterday very tired. I haven't yet had a chance to go through and upload my photos from the past couple of days but hoping there is some good scrapbooking inspiration among them. Perhaps a few to be deleted too as my nephew was running around taking random photos... using the multishot option on my camera so there are about 20 of almost the same thing lol

I wanted to share a recent creation that I made which was part of the gift for my mum for Christmas. It is my first completed Toilet paper mini album and I made it into a Gran's Brag Book style mini album with photos of Lily.

I used the Authentique uncommon collection as its perfectly girly for the theme of a new baby girl. That teamed with some pretty pink and white embellishments and the whole thing came together fairly quickly. Although not quick enough for me to finish the second one I have in progress for my nephew Caiden. My sis is keen for the finished product after seeing mum's album yesterday.

Otherwise, I've been doing a little bit of creating in between time with Lily and preparing for Christmas, although nothing else I can share just yet. Will hopefully get some crafty time in during the next few days.

We have very little planned for this week so it will be a nice relaxing week at home. It will give me some time to play with one of my new christmas presents... Adobe Photoshop Elements. Excited! hehe

Wishing you all a safe and happy festive season.

Holly x

Our New Arrival - Lily

Hello

Well it is with great pleasure I get to share the news of our baby's arrival. Lily Lavina Connors arrived on Monday 3 December. She was due today so a bit of an early arrival. Just couldn't wait to meet her mummy and daddy perhaps :)

We could not be happier or prouder of our perfect little bundle of joy. She is so tiny and precious. She weighed in at 6 pound 4 ounces, or 2.83kg so a very tiny bundle. Even the 0000 clothes are big on her as I didn't expect to need anything smaller. She was 47 cms long.

We arrived home yesterday afternoon after less than 48 hours in hospital. Initially I was considering staying a bit longer as she took a bit of time to get the hang of feeding but all is going well now and we have settled in at home as a family. She gets a bit restless at night so one thing we need to work on now is getting into a routine where night time is sleep and not the reverse lol But otherwise all is going very well.

Proud daddy Simon

Mummy

Thank you to those of you who have already wished us well on our pregnancy journey and the many of you I have on Facebook who have sent lovely comments of congratulations on Lily's arrival. Expect plenty of updates as this is going to be one very spoiled little miss hehe

Holly xo

Baby Shower & Nursery Update

 

Hello

On Saturday I was lucky enough to have my baby shower. It was a great day and shared with so many lovely friends and family. The baby shower was held at my house as I liked the idea of having it at home and being able to be comfortable in my own surroundings and show everyone my nursery as it progresses. My mum hosted and one of my close friends took care of the games, so overall it went smoothly and was a total blast.

I had a bit of fun creating for the day so here are a few of the items I made:

The invitations included the following poem:

One small request that we hope won't be too hard, please bring a book instead of a card.
Whether Cat in the Hat or Winnie the Pooh, please sign the inside cover with a note to baby from you.
Your book will be forever cherished, well-loved or brand new, although please don't feel obliged; we will leave it up to you.

I saw this idea on Pinterest... of course! And thought that's such a great, sentimental idea. So now our little girl has a lovely collection of books to start her life out. Some aimed at very young babies with texture and others aimed later on, with fairy tales and nursery rhymes.

They will look great with the book ends I made to go in her room. Although I just realised I have not yet photographed them. Oops!

I also had some fun making home baked favours for my baby shower guests.. although you just have to ask mum how time consuming and painful they got by the end lol I made sugar cookies and cut them out with baby themed shapes and then we spent several hours the next day icing them ready for the shower.

 We discovered icing cookies is a long, tedieous and messy task. But they looked pretty cool and tasted even better!

And the very worst part... baby brain meant that I forgot to give half my guests a favour on the way out the door. Oops! Sorry to those of you who missed out. I was so proud of them too.

Baby brain also made me forget to put my cookies and cream cheesecake out for everyone to eat but a couple of friends and my parents stayed for a BBQ after and they were very happy at this memory lapse!

 Mmmmm yummies! Colour co-ordinated pink and a few splashes of green. Mum even used cookie cutters to shape the sandwiches into baby shapes.

And the most overloaded present table I have ever seen. The picture does not even begin to do justice for how incredibly spoilt our baby is following Saturday. Such kind and generous friends and family. It was so much fun opening everything and I've just spent the past couple of hours sorting and figuring out exactly what we now have. So bad but I'm paraonid our baby will turn out a boy now after all this pink has filled the babies room lol

So I finally took some pics of the book ends I made for the nursery:

 Kaisercraft bookends with the Kaiser tigerlilly collection of papers, collectables and rub ons and some D-lish scraps flowers.

And here they are with our babies well established book collection:

And some updates of the nursery and how it is looking these days:

Still a while to go before it has that finished look but that will be the plan closer to babies arrival.

And the latest bump photos:

 At the baby shower 30 weeks, 3 days.

And today's very brave bare belly photo, 30 weeks, 5 days. Can't believe the count down is less than 10 weeks now!

Well, its time for some crafting. Currently working on an OTP for a design team committment that I'm running a bit behind on. Now that the baby shower is over with, I can catch up again and relax. I have spent today and yesterday doing virtually nothing to recover from the big day Saturday lol

Hope you have all been having a good weekend, especially those of you who are lucky like me with a long weekend.

Holly xo

It's a Girl...

Today we had our 19 week ultrasound and not long did everything look to be coming along nice and smoothly, we also got to find out that we are having a baby ...

GIRL!!!

So incredibly excited. I was convinced we were having a boy but always wanted a daughter so am totally over the moon. Simon had guessed girl all along and in this instance, I was happy for him to win the bet lol

 We had a bit of fun announcing the news to our family and friends with the above pics. Unfortunately I could not find a plain white shirt or a pink scarf so I had to make do with the things I could find lol

And we purchased our first girl specific baby items. Pink doesn't seem to be in fashion in Target right now... Red and peach were more prominent. However the little frilly mini mouse outfit was too cute for words to pass up on. Will be cute over Christmas.

And some close up face shots from our Ultrasound :) Isn't technology amazing these days?

I will be sharing the winner of my prize from the A2Z Blog hop soon so stay tuned.

Holly x



So it begins...

Hey there

Welcome to all my lovely new blog followers. Hope those of you who joined in had some fun hopping along with the A2Z Scraplets blog hop. Thank you for all your lovely comments to those of you who did visit xo

So my nesting instinct has started to kick in now that I have energy back during this pregnancy. This weekend I completely emptied out the spare bedroom that will be our nursery. Some of you may remember a recent post with a room that looked a little something like this:

Pretty shocking, I know. Well after much effort and a process of making the rest of my house look much much worse, this particular room now looks like this:

Well it is now minus the wall hangings. But the cute little 4 drawer cupboard is now in the cupboard, since it won't match my dark wood nursery furniture. But at least the room is otherwise empty and the carpet has been vacuumed and steamed today. Ready for the nursery to start coming together.

My nursery furniture will be the following package:

It consists of a 7 drawer dresser that has a change table attachment that is removable for later on and a sleigh cot with an under draw that converts to a toddler or day bed later on. Cannot wait until they arrive. So pretty!

And I also have one of these comfy looking glider rockers arriving sometime in the next day or two. The cream and dark brown wood one at the bottom:

How fabulous will they look in our nursery? I am so excited. But I do have to start getting the rest of the house orderly again too. But to help that along, I did buy a new display unit and cupboard to help manage some of our clutter. I am a hoarder. Hopefully the nesting will make me strict in my cull over coming months lol

So we are getting pretty organised for the baby now. A couple of items left to get but most of the big stuff is organised. My lovely parents got us a pram today too. An apple green one to match my car hehe

I am 18 weeks now and on Saturday we get to find out what gender our baby will be. I know a surprise would be fun and up until maybe a year ago, I would have agreed but being the first, we decided we wanted to be completely organised and be a little gender specific with what we buy. And I really hate yellow so this avoids lots of that awful gender neutral colour LOL

Anyway, thanks for popping by. I have a few scrappy shares for later on this week and there will be some blog hop winner announcements!

Holly xo