Why I Don't Pose Babies in My Photography Business
Let's have an uncomfortable conversation. Recently, we posted a reel about how I don't pose babies in my work, and a lot of folks didn't like that.
Here’s the truth.
I've been a newborn photographer for over 24 years, and I've never posed babies. I choose not to do this because of safety concerns. Now, I know one can be trained to pose babies safely; however, my personal belief has always been that if you have to be trained how not to injure a baby for a photograph, perhaps you shouldn't be doing that pose in the first place.
In the very beginning of my career, I wasn't posing babies. I honestly didn't know that was a thing! I started with maternity clients and that naturally led to working with babies. My style lent itself to naturally inspired posing, like babies being held by their mothers for example. Years into my career, I started getting requests from clients to pose their babies, so I took a class.
During the class, the instructor told us about the importance of weighing down buckets when posing babies in them to avoid the possibility of the baby falling out of the bucket and breaking its neck. And to me, if that's even a remote possibility, I am never going to do that. I believe that no photo is worth injuring a child.
It is not my intention to attack anybody, but I do feel that it's my responsibility as an industry educator to show people that there's another way. If you are uncomfortable with posing babies - whether it's a style thing or a personal thing - then you do not have to do it. You can still have a profitable photography business as a newborn photographer without posing babies.
Want to learn my approach to baby-led posing? Join my course Simply Posed here!
