Posed Versus Natural Posing for Newborn Portraits | Clarksburg, Maryland Family And Newborn Photography

Posed vs. natural posing for newborn portraits. When I first started shooting newborns I was trying to copy all the cute poses with all the cute outfits I saw other photographers doing. After a few sessions, I said "Forget it! This was not for me! I could not get my images to look anything like what was filling my Instagram feed. It was frustrating, to say the least. Then I found the answer to my problems.

After doing a lot of research on newborn photography I ran across the work of one of my now, favorite, family and newborn photographers, Sandra Coan. Based in Seattle, Washington she shoots only film coupled with strobes. In that area you can't always count on nice sunny days. I thought, how in the heck do you this with film and strobes! The other thing I noticed, no cutesy poses, tons of props or photoshopped images. Just natural, beautiful images.

I found her on Facebook and contacted her. I asked a lot of questions about film, metering, posing, photoshop, all that stuff. She said, why don't you just let the baby pose themselves? So, after watching her creative live course on shooting film portraits with strobes, I got started.

After a couple of newborn portrait sessions, I thought, yeah, this is for me. Babies really are just perfect the way they are! In my opinion, they just don't need anything beyond gorgeous light and their gorgeous smiles. So, posed vs. natural posing for newborn portraits, for me, it's all about natural posing.

Natural posing, lifestyle, documentary style, these all mean pretty much the same thing. This means that rather than using a lot of props, wraps, flowers, clothing items and creating each photo with a different pose, we focus more on letting the baby just be themselves. I don’t force any poses or do any type of portraits that could be unsafe. Rather I let them stir, move their head where they want, I wait for that little smile or yawn and then capture that moment. This being said, I encourage all my moms and dads to bring in different outfits, handmade blankets, any props that you would want to have photographed with you and your newborn.

I do this with the parents in these portraits as well. I like to find a position where everyone is look great and interacting with each other, then give a prompt or a silly line to get an expression and then photograph these as timeless candid moments. I find that most people are uncomfortable with having their photos taken, so adding another layer of stress with “posing” just isn’t needed.