I photographed this Hong Kong family for the third time last year, and it was such a special session as they had just welcomed their new baby girl, and had also very recently moved into their new home: a light filled flat in Mid-Levels that they had completely renovated.
This session was in October, which is when I photograph families in HK each year. Baby ‘E’ was just about two months old, and her big sister was so, so sweet with her.
about the session: newborns
Often families will ask me when the best time is to schedule newborn portraits. If you are booking a photographer who does traditional posed newborn portraits, they will usually give you a fairly tight timeframe, within a maximum of ten days after birth. This is because in this stage, newborns are still sleeping a lot, and still very ‘bendy’, and so the photographer is able to get them into very particular sleepy bendy poses that aren’t possible once the baby is a little bigger.
I photograph newborns in my own style; the same way I photograph all of my families, which is more candid/relaxed, with the new baby as a part of the family unit. I prefer to photograph baby in your arms, with siblings, and interacting, rather than photographing baby in a specific set of carefully crafted poses. This posed genre of newborn photography is very beautiful as well, and everyone will have their own preference, but it is not how I work. Because of this, the age of your baby comes down to a preference of which stage you would like captured: would you like those very fresh new days at home, or prefer to wait a few weeks until you feel a bit settled? Or even a month or two, when baby still feels very small, but is more alert, has added on some adorable baby pudge, and is interacting more with you?
