This session was completely last minute and was not planned. When I was still in the hospital, I received a message on FaceBook from a friend (who does photography) and she asked me if I was interested in doing a newborn photoshoot with Mason. She was attending a workshop and the facilitator was looking for newborn models that were between 5-12 days old. I was a little hesitant considering Mason was just born and had arrived 3 weeks early and the session was going to be held in Lincoln Park downtown. This means we would have to truck it to the city with a brand new baby who was 7 days old. Plus, Mason had already done a newborn session the day before at our home.
I reached out to the photographer for more information (http://jaciforshtay.com/). Basically, she conducts these mentoring workshops where she has a group of photographers who learn how to conduct a newborn session from beginning to end. She goes through set-up and preparation and reviews camera and shooting techniques. She also teaches different soothing methods and her posing techniques. Each of the participants at the workshop would have an opportunity to photograph the babies for their own website/portfolio. The session would be completely free to me, and as a "thank you" she would edit 10 of her favorite images from the session and give them to me on a CD. (If you've used a professional photographer in the past, you know they can be quite expensive so this was definitely appealing to me)!
The photographer already had 2 baby girls lined up and she was looking for a newborn boy. After giving it some thought, we decided to go ahead and do it. We didn't have anything to lose! We needed to be in the city by 10:00 am. This would be our first time venturing out of the house as a family of 4 and I was bit nervous about making it on time. After feeding, changing, and getting everything together - we were on our way. My brother agreed to watch Leah for us so we didn't have to bring her along. We dropped her off at his house. Leah was super excited to play with her cousin Annabelle. We made it to the studio just before 10:00 am. It was a very hot day and when we walked in, it was even hotter inside! They had a small space heater running. I didn't understand at first, but learned that the warmer it is, the easier it is for the babies to cooperate. The babies would be photographer naked (with no diaper). The warm temperature helps keep them in their 'sleepy' mode. It definitely worked for Mason. He was a perfect little angel for the entire session. He didn't even pee (although he did poop once - whoops)! We were there about 3 1/2 hours. I give photographers so much credit. It takes a lot of work, time, skill and patience when working with newborns. Overall, I was very pleased with the results and am so happy we did this! It was very interesting to sit through the workshop. Take a look!
Behind the scenes of Mason's photoshoot
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