Babies Archives - Whitney A Photography

Jan09

Top Hospital Pictures to Capture During Your Stay.

Jan09

Top hospital pictures to capture during your stay.

Plus tips and tricks on how to achieve them.

There are so many things running through a moms mind when getting ready to head to the hospital to give birth the her sweet angel. Rather it’s the first baby or the third or fourth baby, we all have the same panic moments heading into the hospital. For most of us, documenting life around us as we enter the delivery room is not top on the priority list. Expectations of getting those pictures go out the window with the first contractions.

Many of us will plan ahead to either have a birthing photographer (a photographer who comes in to document the birth of your baby), or a photographer who comes in to document your stay in the hospital after your baby has been born (Fresh 48 photographer). Either way, or even without hiring a photographer at all, there are things that you or your guest can document as a keepsake from your hospital stay. The main thing to remember is to document life as it’s happening with little to no posing. Here are a few top hospital pictures to capture during your hospital stay!

In this blog, I’m featuring Mr. Ezekiel and the gorgeous Fravel family. They welcomed Ezekiel into the world on the 3rd of December at 3:15PM! This little stinker is currently the youngest of the Fravel boys, but boy does his big brothers, Micah and Noah, love him!! Please help me welcome Ezekiel into this crazy big world and enjoy the photos of this handsome little man and his beautiful family in the mean time.

(Share the love by commenting on this blog! The Fravel Family will receive an additional 11×14 premium canvas once this post reaches 50 comments!!)

Things you’ll need: The baby ;), a well lit room (open up those blinds to bring in the nice natural light from outside!) or if that isn’t an option L&D rooms have pretty amazing birthing lights they use! Ask for assistance for using those bad boys! Try to avoid using flashes. Remember baby has been in the womb for quiet some time now. The room is already fairly bright to them, adding a flash can startle baby and can be harmful to their little eyes. (Professional photographers know how to bounce light from flashes or defuse the flash so that it is not harmful for baby)

Top Hospital Picture #1

The Babies Face, and all the fine details.

Rather or not you have a professional camera, a point and shoot camera, or the camera on your cell phone (which by the way are proven to be pretty great now a days), this is an easily achievable photo to grab! First you want to get a nice full picture of the baby and work your way in. Full body, a picture of the babies face, and don’t forget those tiny little details: ears, nose, eyelashes, mouth, dimples, and the little hair on their head. These details are super easy to get, even if the baby is nice and wrapped up. For most cell phone cameras you can tap and hold on the detail you’d like to be in focus on the back of the camera and it will lock it into place. Aim at shooting down the facial features rather than shooting up them and avoid using a flash.

Top Hospital Picture #2

Mom & Baby, Dad & Baby

Some new moms want to document everything from the timing of their first contraction, to the time they set foot out of the hospital with their brand new baby. This photo opportunity can be snagged at many different times and can represent different emotions depending on when you decided to capture it. It can range from the first time mom set eyes on baby, or the first time she’s holding baby, skin to skin photos with mom and dad are breath taking and something you will treasure for years to come! Bonus: You can grab little sentimental moments of mom or dad snuggling with baby. In those first hours when snuggling with baby, everything seems to disappear. The emotions you’ll capture when they’re in the moment are priceless!

Top Hospital Picture #3

Cleaning Up, Tiny Toes, & little bands

By now the sweet little one is getting ready for their first bath, having their feet and handprints taken, and getting tagged as brand new baby X(insert last name here). This is the best time to capture the tiny little details of babies hands, feet, cord, and any other little detail that may be bundled up after bath time. One of my favorite shots is of the baby getting their first little bath and the nurses stamping their little feet. Some babies may not have much hair while other moms endured heartburn for the last seven months and it’s paid off! After the babies bath, you’ll have the opportunity to document babies feet getting stamped, and actually most nurses will help pose their tiny little feet so you can get a great photo! Don’t forget to snag a picture of the certificate with the babies inked feet and hands on it. Don’t forget about the babies little bands. They’ll have a band on each arm and one on their foot that coordinates with mom and dads bands (which also makes a cute keepsake photo).

Top Hospital Picture #4

Meeting the family/ siblings for the first time.

One of the most documented milestones in a hospital stay is the big brother(s) or sisters(s) meeting baby for the first time. For some, this is such an exciting time! The emotions and facial expressions you’ll get are priceless! Here are a few tips for getting those awesome expressions: Make a grand entrance! Have someone help by bringing the siblings in and close the curtain in front of the door. That way everyone is prepared for the curtain to open (or the door if there is no curtain!) As the one taking the photo, you’ll want to stand on the other side of mom and the baby. Chances are, the siblings will be overly excited to see mom and meet the new baby! You’ll get those first few smiles and snuggles! After the excitement has faded a bit, they’ll be sure to want to hold their brand new baby! Of course that’s up to the desecration of mom and dad. 😉

Top Hospital Picture #5

The Surroundings

One of the first, and last, things I document when wrapping up a hospital photo session is documenting the surrounds. Photographs to grab are a photo of the hospital the baby is being delivered at, hall ways/ room door, nursery, charts, details of the doctor/ nurse on duty chart, and photographs of the room(s) mom and baby are staying in. You can get a good bit of these when mom and baby are getting ready to be discharged from their hospital stay. Don’t worry about clutter or food/ toys being all over the room, after all we live in these rooms for at least 24-48 hours. Clutter and food just means we were human beings staying in there. 🙂

For more top picks for hospital photos to grab check out this blog over here at The Baby Center! <3

May11

Newborn Baby Girl

May11

Whitney A Photography | Newborn Baby Girl | DeRidder, Louisiana

As many of you may know, we are fairly new in town; we’ve been in our home a little over two months. One of the first few weeks here our neighbors sweet puppies, Boudin and Etouffee, escaped from their backyard. As my husband and I were out in the yard, painting and staining who knows what, we see this little blonde lady running after her fur babies- mind you, this little blonde lady was about 8 months pregnant. We stopped what we were doing and helped her round up her babies, and sat and talked with her for a few minutes. We found out she was an English teacher at Rosepine High School (You aren’t allowed to judge me on my writing 😉 ) and that she was the cheerleading coach. Also, that she was expecting a sweet newborn baby girl at the end of April!

After the arrival of her sweet little Angel, I decided to fix her something for dinner.. After all, who wants to cook after having a baby!? I remember another neighbor saying that she was Vegan… SO… I hopped on the computer and tried to educate myself on what yummy foods a vegan could have.. I ended up making A Creamy Avocado Pasta , which sounded pretty amazing… and headed that way with some vegan mayo in tow.

A few days later, momma and Miss Clara were in the studio! Oh man was she not the cutest little stinker EVER!! Perfect in every single way! Clara’s daddy gets to meet her soon for the first time and I can not wait to document that beautiful first connection!! Military events typically make me cry- because I’m a very emotional dork and happy cry, sad cry, mad cry, overwhelm cry… good book cry.. so chances are pretty high that I will ugly cry at this particular event.. Tissue will be handy!

Any who, without further ado, meet Miss Clara!! <3

May05

Stay Humble

May05

Whitney A Photography | Stay Humble

In a most recent blog post posted here “Fauxtographers” go away! , I was reminded and encouraged to Remember Where I Came from, Grow, and to Always Stay Humble. Hunter Leone is one hilarious photographer as he goes on telling his story of how he once was a “fauxtographer” and gives his story on one of his first newborn sessions. Many may not know, outside of the photographer community, but Hunter is big time photographer over at Three Nails Photography and collaborates with Greater Than Gatsby and produces some amazing actions and presets that can be used to style your photography similar to his editing style. AKA- he is BIG time.. He shares some of his journey in all its glory- the good, the bad, and the ugly! In the words of Hunter, Stay Humble.

Above, I’ve posted my very first newborn session compared to my newest (photographed last Thursday *7 days ago*) newborn. As you can see…. I sucked! I borrowed about 95% of the things shown from one of my friends who was too a photographer. I remember Sam saying “How are you going to offer a newborn session in studio and you don’t even have a floor drop!?” After this newborn session, it was a sad reality check that I was not in the boat to photograph newborns, or any other indoor studio sessions. Samantha and I started working together, photographing newborns left and right to grow our knowledge and learn while having 4 hands instead of 2. Safety was definitely our main concern, so we were constantly watching videos and learning from other photographers, how they did things, their workflow, any little tidbits others were willing to share, we were observing and absorbing. I remember after our first official newborn session together we were on cloud nine! We ROCKED that session!! Looking back… it’s just a hot mess.. haha MY editing was all over the place, lighting was flat, babies skin was all sorts of colors… but by George we were doing it!! We offered many, many free and discounted newborn sessions until we were comfortable enough to charge. In that time frame we both grew. In that 6 months, I learned more about photography, editing, style, my camera, than I had ever knew. Although we are half a Country away, we chat on the daily and are always asking each others opinions.

I was most definitely a fauxtographer! I had a dream and was just starting out! I remember setting up little sessions in our kitchen, outside in the backyard… Anywhere that I thought looked appealing. I vividly remember doing a 4th of July mini with me and my kiddos posted up in the backyard.. For some reason, this photo is still my husbands background on his iPad. I remember scrolling through the wives page seeing someone commenting about all these fauxtographers around here posted up in their backyard wanting people to pay them for their work….. (Inserts raised hand! Because that was MEEEE!!!) I am so thankful for the ones who’ve stuck around through my good, back and ugly phases!! You guys truly believed in me or either had some serious momma goggles on… 😀

Anyhow, I would love to share some of the classes or tutorials that have helped me along the way. Some I can’t even tell you where because I had just randomly stumbled on them.. I have taken courses from Kelly Brown, Jasmine Star, Susan Stripling, Julia Kelleher, Aaron with Phlearn, oh and Clickingmoms.com –and many many many online tutorials and reading.

If you have a dream, you can achieve it. It may not be pretty at first, and it isn’t easy; it takes hard work, dedication, many many hours of sweat, stress, and being on the computer…. but if you are willing to work for it… anything is achievable! Stay Humble.

If you’d like to see more photos of this beautiful baby girl, Mrs. Clara, I will be blogging her session later on in the week!! Visit often to read more and see added information on my Facebook page and on my website!

May05

Mommy and Me Children’s Photographer

May05

Mommy and Me Session with the Clark Family|April 16, 2016 | Children’s Photographer

I had the absolute pleasure of photographing this beautiful little family in Hodges Gardens State Park. For those of you who’ve never been to Hodges Gardens, it is hands down one of the most beautiful parks and is full of Southern charm. It was the best setting to photograph this gorgeous mommy and her beautiful babies!! Jude and Carter are best friends and you could just see the love this big brother had for his baby brother!

When you’re a military family, you move… It’s just what you do. For business owners, it can be challenging to get back in the loop of things; building new clientele, marketing in a new area, finding new locations, these are only a small portion of the headaches of uprooting your business and planting it in a new state or even country. Trying to get your name out there can be intimidating! You don’t want to be that annoying constant poster of the Facebook groups, so you have to come up with creative ways to spread your name like wild fire. My way of doing this is by contest. The freebie… Who doesn’t like free??? Right? My contest consisted of “How many jelly beans are in my candy jar?” I had many enter, but only one won the prize. Some say the military is a small community, yet often we feel like it’s HUGE… Fact is, if you’ve met someone in one location, you are bound to see them in another location, or know someone who knows them.. In this case, this beautiful family just so happened to know one of my best friends, a fellow photographer, someone I’ve known and grew with as a photographer.. And she got to have her photos taken by this amazingly talented photographer back in California! Who knew her lucky guess would have us crossing paths not even a half a year later.

Anywho, back to this beautiful little family. These two little boys were just the cutest! Jude was such a big help, helping me capture a few photos of his mommy and little brother. And I got some sweet little laughs and snuggles from Mr. Carter while capturing the sweet moments between mom and Jude.. Here are a few of my favorites from them. <3

Mommy and Carter, he really was one of the happiest of babies!! Jude and Mommy!! <3

Happy Mother’s Day to all the beautiful women out there rocking the mom status!!

Children’s Photographer is one of my favorite things to capture. I love how innocent they are and how their personality blossoms throughout the photo session.

To view photos of these sweet little boys through the eyes of one of my best friends, you can visit her page here. She too is a Children’s Photographer.

Apr11

Family Photographer Whitney A Photography, Denis Family

Apr11

Whitney A Photography | Milestones Photography | Family Photographer | DeRidder, Louisiana

Last weekend I have the absolute pleasure of working with the beautiful Denis family! It was a gorgeous Spring day in DeRidder, Louisiana, at West Park. The Denis family was looking fabulous and ready to update their family portraits with this family photographer. Mom had a game plan and had picked out some of her favorite pins that she’d like to recreate with her little family of 3. Baby M was such a ham! At only 7 weeks young, this sweet little thing was such a strong, alert baby! You would have never guessed he was so young with all that awesome head control he had!

Christopher and Mila were so awesome together and they have just the most handsome little man! I’m telling ya, this little man was such a natural and could totally model! He had the best little personality and was just so happy go lucky! I don’t remember him getting upset at all during our session. Matters fact, he had such an awesome shoot, he passed out towards the end allowing me to get up and personal with his handsome little features. Their entire session should be showcased because this family was just the cutest, but here are a few of the images from the Denis family session that I loved the most. <3

Baby ‘M’ and all his beautifulness! He was just so handsome in his tiny little red sweater vest! I joked with mom telling her how old her looked (like a grown man) in his cute little outfit.

Family of three, with one handsome little man! He was totally showing off for their session!! I still can’t get over how strong he was!

I wish you both the best of luck in California! 🙂 You have one beautiful little family!