A newborn session at our Cashmere studio.
What a morning in the home studio actually looks like — the warm room, the soft window light, and the small choices that keep a sleepy baby asleep.
Newborn sessions live or die on a few small details. Most of them happen before I lift the camera.
The Cashmere studio is a small room at the back of our home, twenty minutes north of Brisbane CBD. There's nothing dramatic about it — sliding glass doors on one side, soft cream walls, a wardrobe of wraps and headbands in the next room over, and a heater I turn on first thing in the morning. By the time you arrive with baby, the room is warm enough that you can feel it the moment you step in, which is exactly the point.
When to book.
Newborns photograph best within the first nine days. In that window they're still curling into the postures they held in utero, sleeping deeply, and not yet bothered by infant acne or wakeful tummies. From around two weeks, sessions become harder. Babies are more wakeful, less curled, and a bit less forgiving of being moved around. I encourage parents to book during pregnancy, around the two-month-to-go mark, and we lock in a date once baby has arrived.
A morning in the studio.
Most newborn sessions start mid-morning, after a feed at home. I ask parents to pile on the layers and crank the heating in the car — a warm baby is a sleepy baby, and a sleepy baby is what makes the curled, posed images possible. By the time you walk in, the studio is sitting at around 26°C, my heater is humming gently for white noise, and there's tea on if you'd like it.
The first half hour is mostly settling. We chat through any images you've saved or family pieces you'd like to include — a knitted blanket from grandma, a wrap you wore as a baby, a teddy bear with a name. Then a top-up feed, a nappy change, and we begin.
The light does the work.
I work almost entirely with natural light from the sliding doors, supplemented with a single soft studio light when the sky is heavy. No flash, nothing that pops or flares — nothing that would startle a baby out of sleep. The colour palette stays muted on purpose: cream wool, soft beige wraps, neutral headbands. Baby should be the picture; everything else just stays out of the way.
Posed images come first while baby is at their sleepiest, then we move into family poses with mum, dad, and any older siblings. Sibling shots are best done early — small humans have a finite patience for sitting still — and I'll always have something on hand for them to hold or do.
How long it takes.
Posed sessions usually run about two hours behind the camera, plus thirty to sixty minutes for feeds, settles and outfit changes. Lifestyle sessions — done at home in your own bedroom or nursery — can be quicker, anywhere from thirty minutes to two hours depending on baby's mood. Either way, plan to be with me for two to three hours all up. The unhurried pace is non-negotiable; tense parents make tense babies, and you want neither in the photographs.
Afterwards.
I edit by hand over the following two to three weeks. You receive a gallery of finished images delivered digitally, and we can talk through prints, albums or a slideshow if you'd like something to hold. Most families come back for a six-month sitter session, then again at one — those three milestones together tell a beautiful, very short story.
If you're thinking about it.
If you're expecting and weighing up a newborn session, the most useful thing you can do is enquire early. I take a small number of newborn bookings each month so I can hold the date in your due window — and once baby arrives, you'll have one less thing to organise.
More from the journal: Golden-hour family portraits at Samford →