Shooting Day Zero – A Guide to taking photos of your new baby.
As you may be aware and the large bags under my eyes from lack of sleep attest to I have just become a father to twins. Now being a keen photographer as well, I wanted to make sure I captured their first moments in this world. I thought whilst I still had a touch of sanity in my brain left I’d write down some pointers for taking photos, and tech..I’ll leave all the machines that go ping to the hospital of course.
You’ll need to do a bit of planning, but given that you get one moment to experience, well in my case two, you do kind of want to get it right.
Firstly, work out with the one doing all the work what she is comfortable with. This will stop arguments down the track before you start sharing photos that she and possibly the rest of the world doesn’t want to be seen. As a friend on Twitter told me..“What has been seen, can’t be unseen”.
Whilst the best photo you always get is the one with the camera you have on you at the time, there are still a few things to make life easier. You will want to check that you can take photos to begin with. Some places get a bit funny about it and you certainly don’t need to be having an argument with the doctors at that time
Next, don’t take all your gear, you won’t need it. In my case I took a D7000, and 178-105mm lens and a 50mm f/1.8 and my SB700… Not even using the 50mm lens till much later in the day. Then make sure it is all charged, days in advance. If you have a real flash, take a spare set of batteries, and spare cards for the camera as well. If you wanted to use a friends camera make sure you are familiar with it, even in automode before hand.
Double check the timestamp on your camera is accurate. You will want that to be correct in the years to come.
So, we have the gear, we have permission, and everything is charged. Don’t forget the camera. I know of cases where this has happened. If you have a checklist for hospital, put the camera etc on that list. Moreover, if you don’t have a checklist for hospital, make one.
<drum roll>The big day…. </drum roll>
Unless you are a professional photographer who can work under intense emotional pressure, put the camera on automode. You don’t want to be stuffing around with settings at the time. Make sure if you are shooting on a DSLR, shoot RAW, at the maximum resolution your camera shoots at.. This gives you the option later to tweak white balance etc with no impact on the images.
Most important at this point, pay attention to the moment. Sure having the photos is great, but missing the moment for a photo, I think not. I didn’t get some photos because I was in awe at what was happening, so should you be.
Then, we you get the chance, take LOTS of photos. Babies move a lot, at least with a real flash on the camera, which of course you can bounce behind you in a white room nicely you will get some keepers. Try not to use the onboard flash, it creates nasty shadows and points into very delicate little eyes. Another option is to shoot at a higher ISO and in shutter priority mode at 125 or higher.
A few other tips for photos, you can act as a sense of scale. You’ll soon forget how small they were, putting a little hand next to yours will give you that. Shoot the little details as well. The hands, feet, ears and nose. People look at these for family resemblance.
If your camera is in fully automode you can hand the camera to the nurses or staff to get a photo of you as well. You will want shots of you with them as well as them.
I did my 50mm shots of the girls about 4 hours after they were born once things had calmed down a little. Then I did the uploading of the images. I took my EEPC Slate, which let me deal with the RAW files in lightroom, but onboard processing will do just fine as well for those first shots.
Black and white photos of babies are done for a reason. It evens out skin tones. A new born babies skin can be anything from yellow to bright red. Shooting RAW gives you more flexibility to process these post the event.
Then make a backup of all the images. There are going to be images that if you lose, you will never get back. That night I then made offsite backups of the RAW files as well. You can never have too many backups.
So that covers your photos, but a few other things you are going to need. If you have a laptop, take the charger for your smart phone as well. It will run out of charge, you will be making a lot of calls. Get a cheap Bluetooth headset or a mic for your phone as well. That way you can have a coffee and make all the calls you need to on the day without fretting about running out of charge and still having a hand free.
Finally at this point breath, relax and enjoy those memories of sleep.
