Capturing your baby's first year

      I am extremely happy to be photographing so many families and particularly, this year, the expanding families of my wedding clients. And that includes lots of beautiful babies! I thought I'd share a few thoughts about how to document your baby's first year. I've seen many clever ways of marking the months and milestones but I have two personal favorites.
     The first way is to find something that you intend to keep, such as an article of clothing, a hat, anything that your child can grow in to.
The second way is to pose your child next to something in the environment that never changes, such as a tree, your front porch,a local statue, be imaginative and be sure whatever you choose will be there for quite a few years. As you pose your child next to the tree, etc. you are also documenting their growth. We use our front porch to photograph my son first day of school every year.
      I've posted some awesome ideas earlier in my blog from Aubrey and Lucy's sessions if you want to scroll down and check them out. But I wanted to post Tommy's one year session because we created two ways to photograph Tommy that will become a special momento of his first year. Tommy's dad is a police officer, so we thought it would be super cute to put Tommy into his dad's uniform at his first year session. Then each year, or every five years, they can put Tommy back into that uniform until he fills it out, just like daddy! Can you imagine the precious series of photos that would make?
     The second part of the shoot and the messiest was to give Tommy his first cake to demolish. This is especially good if it is really the first time your child has eaten cake. The reactions from the children when they are allowed to eat, smash and make artwork of that cake are precious. Two hints for this idea, get a small cake and make sure the icing is white. While you can use any color you like, it is sometimes difficult to remove the color from clothes or carpet after the session.
     These are two fun ideas that are priceless.

One day, Tommy will grow into his father's hat and you'll have the photos to show it!

Okay, is he too cute or what?

Use your photos of the cake "smash" in a series to capture the fun!

Mom and Dad get into the act!