How to take beautiful monthly baby photos: Part 2

Your baby will change so much during the first year. Being able to document these changes – through monthly baby photos – as they take place is priceless.

In this post, I’ll share three practical steps on how to take monthly baby photos during your little one’s first year of life. This is Part 2 of my mini-course. If you have not yet read Part 1, I suggest that you read that post first as it guides you through the steps 1-3, which are needed to set up the basics of your monthly baby photos.

In Part 2, I’ll share tips that you need to follow during each month. Whereas the steps in Part 1 only need to be done once, the steps presented in this post need to be repeated each time you take your monthly baby photos. 

Ready? Let’s get started!

Step 4: Decide what your baby will wear

If you followed my advice on Step 2 (blog post Part 1) and chose a neutral background for your photos, then you can dress your baby in any outfit that you’d like. But if you like a soft, timeless aesthetic to your photos, as I do in mine, then I recommend choosing soft tones. That is, pairing white, grey, or beige with a pop of color. 

You can still dress your baby in an outfit with patterns. Buuuut, try to stick to pastel or muted tones. Also, try to mix it up throughout the months: outfit with patterns and neutral outfits. Once you put all of the images together in a collage, it will make a huge difference to the final look. Remember: the final images will be a 12-photo collage. So, it is important to think of them as one final photo versus individual photos.

A way to make your images more meaningful is to choose outfits that are your favorite for that specific month. Or, an outfit that was a gift. 

Step 5: Place your baby properly in relation to the light

Light is everything in photography. I mean E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G.

Another mistake that I see all the time in Instagram baby photos is how parents place the baby in relation to the light. This step is more on the technical side of things. But I’m sharing it because it makes a difference. If the light is off in a photo, it is one of those things that you don’t know what is wrong, but you can definitely tell that something is off. 

Using the light properly is the one element that will make your monthly baby photos go from looking like a snapshot to like a professional collection. Your main goal here is simple: it is to have your baby be well illuminated! That is, you want your baby’s face to have beautiful, soft light on it. 

You need to consider four things:

Tip 1 | Open all of the windows to let as much light in as possible.

You need the room where you’ll take your monthly baby photos to have enough light. Also, turn off any light. All you need is natural light in the room. 

Tip 2 | Photograph when the light in the room is soft.

That is, there should be no direct sunlight coming through the window. If it is a sunny day, an easy option is to photograph around midday when the sun is up high in the sky. This way, it won’t be coming through in any room of your home.

Tip 3 | Position your baby properly in relation to the light.

This step really matters! One thing to remember is that the closer to the window, the more illuminated your baby will be. 

Options for positioning your baby if you opt for your baby to sit up: 

• Place him or her facing the window. This light is beautiful and very flattering.
• Place him or her with the window on the side – this is called sidelight, and it is beautiful. But be aware that it does add more shadows to your photo, making it darker. If you like the soft, luminous look, as I do, then you might need someone to hold a white pillowcase on the opposite side of your baby (the side that is not next to the window)

Options for positioning your baby if you opt for your baby to lay down:

• Position your baby with the light coming from the side of his or her face.
• Place his or her head and not the feet (I repeat not the feet) at a 45 or 90-degree angle in relation to the window. 

Two mistakes to avoid: 

• If your baby is sitting up: Avoid placing your baby with the window on his or her back. This will make your baby’s face to be in the shadow. We don’t want that at all. As I said before, the goal is to have your baby’s face well illuminated with soft light. 
• If your baby is lying down: Avoid placing your baby’s feet at a 90-degree angle in relation to the window. This makes your baby’s face to be illuminated with the light coming from below him or her. This is not flattering for anyone. There is a simple way to know if this is the light you’re using. Just look at your baby’s eyes. And see if the catchlights (or small spots of light) are located in the bottom of the pupil. If so, it shows that the light is coming from below. 

Step 6: Make sure your composition is good

Here we are going to get a bit more technical one more time. But again, if you’re reading this post, it means that you want to make beautiful photos of your baby (versus just taking some snapshots). So, here are my top tips.

Tip 1 | Make sure you do not crop your baby’s limbs with your how you compose your photo.

The number one composition mistake I see all the time in baby photos: the hands or feet are cropped. That is, they are not shown in the photo. Do not leave the fingers, hands, or feet out of the photo. It just looks off. 

If you choose to photograph your baby laying on the ground, you’ll probably need to step on a chair or stool. This is to make sure you have enough distance from the camera/phone and your baby. So you include all of your baby’s body in the photo. When your baby starts to grow, you might struggle to have the whole body in the photo. If that’s the case, just crop at the baby’s tight and do more of a close-up photo. Do not crop in the legs.

Tip 2 | Angle the camera/phone parallel to your baby.

Another mistake that I see often is how parents angle the camera/phone in relation to the baby. They photograph from an odd angle, so it looks like the baby is falling off from the image.

So, for these monthly photos, you want to angle the camera/phone parallel to your baby. For example, if your baby is laying on the ground, you want to hold the camera/phone straight down on your baby. That’s why it helps to be standing onto something. 

A few bonus tips on how to take monthly baby photos

Tip 1 | Enlist help when doing your monthly baby photos.

Especially when your baby starts to move, it will be safer and easier to have someone else helping out with the setup. I always did these photos with my husband’s help. It became a special day out of the month for us. However, this meant that we did not take the photos on our baby’s actual monthly birthday. Instead, we always took our photos on the weekend. So both of us had free time to do it together. 

Tip 2 | The behind-the-scene photos are the best, so make sure to take photos of those too.

I love love LOVE the photos that I took of my baby trying to escape by crawling while my husband chased after him. Or, the moments when my baby was trying to get the letters out of the board, and my husband had to put them back on again. These photos mean a lot.

Tip 3 | Keep things organized!

Create a folder on your phone or computer and organize the photos during each month. If you follow my work, you know already that I love prints. So, if your goal is to print your photos later on, you’ll need to have them organized in one place.

Plus, make sure to choose your one favorite each month (versus choosing the after your 12-month project ends). By choosing your one favorite each month, your work will be much faster and you’ll be saving yourself some time (and feeling overwhelmed) down the road.

Tip 4 | Should my baby look into the camera or not?

Well, it is up to you. Some actually advise that, for these monthly photos, you should not have anyone with you. Like this, your baby will not get distracted by looking at them versus looking straight into the camera. I have a passion for storytelling, and my monthly photos were no different. Yes, they were set up, that is, non-documentary in nature. But, I still love the fact that in many of the photos my baby was not looking into the camera. This is a small detail that make the photos more dynamic, and it adds life to them. 

Pro tip | Wear white.

if you can remember, wear a white shirt when taking the photos! Your shirt will act as a reflector and bring extra light back into your baby’s face. 

Phew, you made it to the end!

I know that there is a lot of information to digest in these two posts. I also know that it might feel overwhelming to follow all of these tips at first. 

When I was taking photos of my baby during his first year, I did make changes and improvements along the way. I did not get it right every time. It was my first time doing these photos and I had to figure them out as I went through the process. 

So, don’t feel that you need to get everything right from the start. Here is what I recommend. If you like this post, just bookmark it and use it as a reference, and re-read it from time to time.

Sleep deprivation, postpartum depression, feelings of overwhelm, teething, breastfeeding challenges – they are all real. Give yourself some grace and have fun! 

Taking action today

Revise these three steps right before you take your monthly baby photos. If you’re still expecting, I recommend playing with a doll or teddy bear (as I did!). So you start practicing these tips straight away.

Step 4: Decide what your baby will wear

Step 5: Place your baby properly in relation to the light

Step 6: Make sure your composition is good

Also, make sure you read Part 1 of this mini-course on how to take monthly baby photos.

What to do next?

I can support you in three ways:

1. You can watch a short video where I’ll walk you through each of these six steps by showing you how I did my own monthly baby photos
2. You can ask me any questions you may have
3. You can share with me your monthly baby photos so I can offer some super friendly, positive feedback through a 5-min video critique. Having an extra pair of eyes to help you see where you can improve is really helpful. 

All you need to do is send me an email on one or all of these three things. Just write to hello@marianadealbuquerque.com with the subject line “How to take monthly baby photos | Blog post” or send me your photo for critique here.

You have got this! Go take adorable photos of your bundle of joy and be proud for being the best mom ever!