Photographers - Community

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.

The thing is — 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 recommend anything to anyone.