I often get asked why I became a newborn photographer. Most women I know in the newborn and family photography industry started their businesses after becoming moms themselves. They started taking photos of their children, bought a nicer camera, took better and better photos, and realized they could turn it into a business. My story is different. I became a newborn photographer 7 years before having my own baby!
I actually went to college for photography. I have a BA in Studio Art with a concentration in Photography. This might not sound strange to you, but I don’t know many other newborn and family photographers who have this background. At the time, I was shooting on black and white film only, developing it myself, using a loupe at a light table to look at my negatives, creating contact sheets and spending hours in the darkroom at the enlarger and with my hands in chemicals to create my own prints.
My days were filled with critiques and art history classes when I wasn’t shooting. I had a single class in photoshop and zero in business management or marketing–most of what I actually spend my time doing today as a photographer. But don’t worry, I did learn the proper way to hang pieces in a gallery space.
After I graduated, I got a job with the company my father worked for my whole life. I had interned there every summer and while I knew nothing about it, Marketing seemed like the best fit since the Director was an art lover and my dad’s best friend. While I ended up enjoying my career here, initially I felt like I didn’t belong into the categories of writers or graphic designers that the groups fell into.
For the first few early years, I searched Craigslist for photography gigs, interviewing for a local newspaper, photographing an painter’s artwork, even photographing houses for a real estate agent friend. I found a wedding photographer looking for a second shooter, and I worked for him for years, spending 8+ hours running around at weddings all over the state, learning a ton but making little more than minimum wage and leaving exhausted and missing half of my weekends during the nicest weather seasons.
Finally I had enough and put my camera away. I was the staff photographer at my company, and when I wasn’t shooting corporate events and headshots, I didn’t even want to look at it. I wasn’t exactly INSPIRED.
However, during this time, all of my coworkers were having babies. And I loved all of them. I wanted to know everything about them (especially about birth and pregnancy) and they loved telling me all the details. When someone brought their baby into the office, I would be first in line to hold them. I became known for my baby obsession, even without having one of my own.
FINALLY one of my good friends had a baby, and asked me to take maternity and newborn photos for her. I had a Facebook friend from middle school who was a newborn photographer, so I had seen her work online, and thought, how hard could it be?
I had no idea what I was doing. I photographed him with random blankets on their couch cushions in a corner of their living room. There was one passable shot with him in an elephant hat that they still have hanging in their house.
But, after this first shoot, I was hooked. What could possibly be better than holding a newborn baby, rocking them to sleep and putting them into an adorable position to document for their parents, who would love and cherish the image, no matter how imperfect that first shoot was. I knew this was going to be my new obsession, learning how to perfectly pose, light, capture, and edit images of babies for their families to have forever.
