6 tips for getting varied photos at a lifestyle newborn session

Living in a big city like San Francisco comes with wonderful food, incredible cultural experiences and teeny tiny living spaces.

It’s not uncommon for me to walk into a newborn client’s home and find their closet converted into a nursery.

In fact, both of my daughters currently call my walk-in closet their room. Over time, I’ve developed some strategies to make these little spaces, often times with less than ideal light, work for my sessions in a way that gives my clients a gallery that doesn’t look like it was just taken in one room.

1. Use one lens.

I know many, many wonderful photographers who use a ton of lenses at each session, and I used to be one of them. Then I received a brand new lens in the mail. It happened to be the incredible 35mm f/1.4, and it’s glorious. I didn’t even mean to do it, I just put it on my camera and never took it off. That choice forced me to get so much more creative with my compositions, move around more, focus on light more and my gallery ended up being so much more varied because of it. Sure, I had all of my other lenses with me just in case, but not having to focus on lens choice can free up your creativity elsewhere.

2. Pose once, shoot three times.

With a new mom who is often recovering from birth and exhausted, I don’t love to have her jumping around the house trying to get shots. I also don’t love to jostle a sleeping baby. A quick way to vary a gallery is to put your clients in one position, in great, flattering light, and then move. Shoot a different perspective, shoot from a different angle, change your depth of field, whatever it takes to make each image in that set of three look completely different than the previous. In addition to changing the way your images look, it also gives your clients some space to breathe into the moment and relax into natural, sweet and candid moments. If I’m being honest, I usually pose once, and shoot more like five or six times.

3. Bring props.

I can just feel all of the lifestyle and documentary photographers shudder, but hear me out! I don’t mean props for your clients, I mean props for you.

I always bring a small foldable ladder, a pair of grippy socks, and wear clothing that I feel comfortable crawling (literally) around in. During in-home lifestyle sessions, even if you aren’t confined to a few hundred square feet, you are often in just a handful of rooms. Shooting at eye level can get stale quickly, whereas jumping up on a ladder can make the same shot look completely different. The same goes for the floor. Get low and isolate focus on just the family’s feet. Shoot up!

I also have an open conversation with the family about moving furniture, or using it as a prop to get the shot before the session begins, which they generally are totally fine with.

4. Spice up your light.

Every time I walk into a newborn session, I have a few things in my head that I want to accomplish, and one of those is achieving as many different lighting situations as I can. Unless there are three windows in a corner room creating completely flat light, in which I mainly focus on varying composition, I always try to have side light, backlight, flat light, and varying degrees of light in between in all of my sessions. I try to match those images to the emotion (flat light for happy, bright, smiling sibling pictures, backlight for sweet, tender moments, and side light for a moodier feel). The focus on switching up light also frees up options in post-processing and helps achieve a gallery that spans the entirety of emotions clients feel with a new life in their home.

5. Utilize all available rooms.

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it is so easy to go to a shoot and only use the couple’s bedroom and the nursery or kids’ room. My clients often won’t move themselves, so I always suggest moving around the house. Shoot the nursery from the hallway, peek around the corner into the kitchen, catch the family walking down the hallway together. Heck, ask them to go outside if it feels right!

6. Break the rules.

Yes, it’s important to know the rules of photography, but I can guarantee that a slightly above eye-level, everyone in focus, evenly lit, with all limbs in view portrait is going to get boring really quickly in a small space. You should certainly get all of those wonderful things in some images, but I hereby give you permission, and in fact, recommend, breaking the rules! Shoot a center composition! Do a head chop! Blur out the parents! Your clients will thank you for it.

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