The best photograph from this session happened while everyone was waiting for the baby to stop crying.

This was an in-home newborn session in Dublin, on an ordinary weekday morning, in a kitchen with a blue and white willow-pattern dresser and a jug of sunflowers on the table. Two parents, a big sister who had waited a long time for this, and a baby boy in a striped babygro who was well past the sleepy fortnight and had opinions about the whole business.

Newborn baby awake in a lounger on a bed, looking towards the camera, at an in-home newborn session in Dublin
Awake, and not remotely interested in being asleep

Start Where the Baby Already Is

I do not begin a newborn session by asking anyone to hold anything. I begin wherever the baby has been put down, which is usually a lounger, a crib, or the pram parked in the hall, and I photograph that first.

Newborn baby asleep in a pram beside a small teddy, in-home newborn photography Dublin

Two reasons. It gets a set of frames on the card before anybody has had a chance to get self-conscious, and the pram and the crib and the teddy propped in the corner are the things that will date the photographs in the right way. In five years this pram will be gone. The teddy will probably still be around, considerably greyer.

The Group, Early

The family group is the photograph everyone actually wants, and the standard mistake is leaving it until the end when the baby has run out of patience and the toddler has run out of the room. I shoot it early, badly lit if I have to, and then again properly later if the morning allows.

Family of four in a Dublin kitchen, parents and big sister gathered around a newborn baby in front of a blue willow-pattern dresser
The dresser did most of the work here

That dresser is a gift. Blue and white plates, a rack of cups, a card on the shelf, all of it in the family’s own colours, and it gives you a busy but coherent backdrop that says house rather than studio. I put the three of them in front of it, moved everyone half a step left so the window was doing the lighting, and let them look at the baby.

Parents and big sister looking at the camera with the newborn baby, in-home family portrait in a Dublin kitchen

Then one frame looking at the camera, because someone’s mother will want it.

Give the Big Sister the Baby

The most useful thing I did all morning was hand the baby to his sister and then stand back and say nothing for about ten minutes.

Big sister in denim dungarees holding her newborn brother in the kitchen, natural sibling photograph Dublin
Ten minutes of not being directed

An older sibling holding a newborn does not need posing, they need permission and a bit of quiet. She sat with him, adjusted his arm, told him things, and I worked around her at 85mm without interrupting. If I had spent that time saying “look up, chin down, smile”, I would have got a stiff, competent set of photographs instead of these.

Mother standing behind her daughter with a hand on her shoulder as she holds the newborn baby, Dublin newborn session

Black and white photograph of a mother and her older daughter looking down at the newborn baby in the daughter’s arms
Black and white, because the kitchen behind them was doing too much

That second one is in black and white for a practical reason rather than an artistic one. The kitchen was full of colour, some of it clashing, and stripping it out left the three faces and nothing else. When a room is fighting you, that is the cheapest fix available.

Then the Handovers

The rest of the morning was a series of handovers. Baby to dad, dad to mum, mum to sister, and back again, which is exactly how the first weeks go anyway.

Father holding his newborn son up against his shoulder beside a bright doorway, in-home newborn photography Dublin

Father standing at the kitchen window holding his newborn baby, natural light newborn photograph Dublin
Standing him a metre from the window, facing in

Fathers, in my experience, hold a newborn up against a shoulder and then have no idea what to do with their face. Give them something to look at, which is the baby, and stand them a metre from the window facing into it. Nothing else required.

Black and white close photograph of a newborn baby’s face resting in his father’s arms, wearing a striped babygro

Black and white close photograph of a newborn baby’s bare foot resting on his father’s hand
The scale photograph, which every gallery needs one of

Every newborn gallery needs at least one photograph that is only about scale. A foot in a hand does it in a way that no full-length frame manages, because the hand gives you the ruler.

Photograph the Feed

Around the middle of the morning the baby needed feeding, and that is not a break in the session. It is the best twenty minutes of it.

Mother sitting at the kitchen table by the window feeding her newborn baby a bottle

Close photograph of a newborn baby taking a bottle, his mother looking down at him
Her face and his, in the same frame, without anyone posing

A feed sits a parent down, puts their face and the baby’s face at the same height, gives their hands a job, and lasts long enough that they forget I am there. Whether it is a bottle or a breast, ask your photographer to shoot it. These are the frames that look like the actual first weeks rather than like a photoshoot about the first weeks.

Mother kissing the top of her newborn baby’s head, his face turned into her shoulder

Newborn baby’s face over his mother’s shoulder, eyes screwed shut mid-cry, at home in Dublin
The furious one, which is the one they laughed at

And there it is, the frame I mentioned at the top. He was over her shoulder, thoroughly unimpressed, face like a fist, and I kept shooting through it because a photograph of a newborn mid-complaint is a photograph of a real baby. The sleeping ones are lovely. This is the one the family laughed at first.

Both parents together holding their newborn baby by a bright kitchen window in Dublin

Upstairs, and the Boring Bits

We moved to the nursery for the last stretch, partly for a different background and partly because the baby needed changing.

Mother lifting her newborn baby up in front of her in the nursery, both looking at each other
A metre from the nursery window

Father and mother dressing the newborn baby in his crib, hands doing up a striped babygro

I photograph the nappy change and the getting dressed on purpose. Two sets of hands doing up poppers on a babygro that is slightly too big is a more accurate record of the third week than any portrait, and it is over in ninety seconds, so there is nothing to endure.

Big sister sitting on the sofa cradling her newborn brother in both arms

A framed black and white print of the newborn baby on a side table, the big sister holding him softly out of focus behind
A print of him, already on the table, three weeks in

That framed print was already on the side table when I arrived, and I could not resist it: a photograph of him in the foreground, sharp, and the real thing soft in his sister’s arms behind. It is also a quiet argument for printing your photographs, which I will not labour here.

Finishing

By the end of the morning he had run out of energy for objecting and gave us about four minutes of calm, awake, direct attention, which is when I took the frame at the top of this page and this one.

Close portrait of a newborn baby with his eyes open, held in his father’s arms, in-home newborn photography Dublin
Four minutes of calm, at the end

Parents and big sister gathered around the newborn baby at the kitchen table with sunflowers, end of an in-home newborn session in Dublin

Then we did the family group again at the table, properly this time, with the sunflowers in the corner of the frame, and everyone went off to have lunch.

Planning Your Own At-Home Newborn Session

Timing the Morning

Mid morning is the answer, somewhere between nine and half eleven. The light through a standard Irish window is bright and soft at that hour and it stays useful for hours, so nobody is racing it. Most babies also have a settled stretch after the morning feed.

This session was under three hours door to door, and the gaps in it were a feed, a change, a settle and a good stretch of crying. The current at-home package allows 1–2 hours including breaks; we discuss any particular needs before booking. That is not a session going wrong. That is the session.

The Light You Already Have

I do not bring lights to a newborn session and I would be wary of anyone who does. Everything here is window light, and the rule is simple: get the baby within about a metre of the biggest window in the room, turn them to face it, and put yourself between the two. That is the whole technique.

What actually helps is switching the overhead lights off. Mixing a warm bulb with cool daylight makes skin go strange colours, and a newborn’s skin is already doing plenty of that on its own.

What to Have Ready

Almost nothing. One clear surface near the good window, the overheads off, and the heating up a bit higher than you would normally have it, because babies get photographed with fewer layers than they are usually wearing.

Leave the house as it is. The muslins on the arm of the sofa and the steriliser on the counter are not clutter, they are the date stamp. I would rather see them than a kitchen that has been cleared for the occasion.

Wear Ordinary Clothes

Plain colours or a simple stripe, sleeves that push up, nothing with a slogan. No matching outfits. Everyone in this session wore what they had on that morning, and the striped babygro the baby stayed in the whole time is now the thing that will make them say “that was the third week” the moment they see it.

Bring the Big Sister In Early

Involve older children in the first half hour while it is still exciting, give them the baby with a cushion under their arm and let them talk to him, and then let them wander off. Trying to reclaim a seven year old’s interest at hour two is a losing game.

Thinking About a Newborn Session?

If your baby is past the sleepy fortnight and you have decided you have missed the window, you have not. An awake baby gives you eye contact, expressions and the occasional outraged face, and a session at three or four weeks is a different set of photographs rather than a lesser one.

There is more on how these sessions run on the newborn session page, on the county in the Dublin family photography guide, and on the session that usually comes before this one on the maternity session page. All three sessions are set out together on the family photographer Dublin page.

Have a look at family photography pricing or get in touch and tell me when you are due.