Filing this under things I wish someone had said out loud, because I've now had two people tell me they did the same thing.
My LO is 5 months now. When she was born I had a vague plan to get newborn photos "at some point." I thought newborn meant, you know, a newborn! A small baby. I assumed I had a couple of months.
I emailed a photographer at five weeks and she wrote back very kindly and explained that the sleepy curled-up posed shots, the ones I had in my head, the ones I'd been picturing for months, basically only work in the first two weeks. After that they uncurl. They startle. They have opinions! She said she'd absolutely still shoot us and it would be beautiful, but it would be a different kind of session, and she wanted me to know that before I booked so I wasn't disappointed.
I sat there and cried about it, which in retrospect was about 30% photos and 70% five weeks postpartum.
But when exactly was I supposed to have booked that?! At two weeks I could not have told you what day it was. The window for booking the thing is inside the period where you are least capable of booking anything. That's a design problem and somebody should have warned me while I was still pregnant and bored and organizing things.
What I ended up doing: booked a lifestyle session at home at 7 weeks instead of a posed studio one. In-home, no props, she just followed us around for 90 minutes while we did nothing. $450 including digitals, which felt like a lot and now feels like nothing. There's one of my husband asleep on the couch with her on his chest that I will have until I die.
So, two questions, and I want the boring specifics.
When did you book, and when did you shoot? If you got the posed newborn ones, when did you actually reach out?
Studio or in-home? And did you use the hospital's photographer? I keep hearing mixed things about those and I'd like to know before I go recommending anything to anyone.
This whole thread is going in the guide! "The window to book it is inside the window where you can't book anything" is the clearest statement of the problem I've seen.
Brooke's point deserves its own sign though. Bring someone, for you, not the baby. Six days postpartum in a stranger's studio is a real thing to walk into alone.
Day 6, studio, and I'll be the dissenting voice. I love them, I'd do it again, and the curled-up ones were the entire point for me.
But the honest version: it took 3 hours, most of which was her waiting for him to fall back asleep, and I was 6 days postpartum sitting on a donut cushion in a stranger's studio bleeding through a pad and trying to look serene. It was worth it and it was also the hardest thing I did that week and nobody warned me about that part either.
If you're doing posed at under 2 weeks, bring...
In-home, and I'd do in-home again. Studio ones are gorgeous and they also all look like each other. I couldn't pick mine out of a lineup of other people's. The in-home ones look like our actual apartment, laundry and all, and that's what I like about them now.
On the hospital photographer: we did it and I regret it. It's a vendor that comes around, it's very quick, and mine came at a bad moment. I felt awkward saying no with them standing there, which I think is somewhat the business model. The photos are fine. They're just fine.
Ask what's included...
"I couldn't pick mine out of a lineup of other people's" is exactly the thing I couldn't articulate about why I stopped being sad about the posed ones. Thank you!
Booked at 30 weeks pregnant for the first one, which sounds insane and was correct! She had me on the calendar as a due-date window and I texted her when he was born and we shot at day 9.
Second baby I did not do this, because I had a 2yo and no capacity, and I have roughly four photos of him from the first month, all taken by me, all blurry, in roughly the same corner of the couch. That's not a photographer problem, that's a second-baby problem. I'm mostly at peace with it. Mostly!
The book-while-pregnant thing is the answer...