How to take beautiful monthly baby photos: Part 1

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 six practical steps on how to take monthly baby photos during your little one’s first year of life.

When my first baby was little, I wanted to document his changes during the first year of his life. For this reason, I decided to take monthly baby photos of him. As I thought it was going to be a fun way to be able to see his growth in a 12-photo collage at the end of this little photography project. So, I set up monthly photos with the help of my faithful photographer assistant – my dear husband! I’m here today to share all my tips and tricks with you.

Here is an overview of the steps we will cover:

• Decide which room you will photograph your baby each month
• Decide where to place your baby
• Decide which prop you’re going to use (if any)
• Choose what your baby will wear
• Keep in mind the light
• Keep in mind the composition

Who did I write this post for?

This blog post is ideal for moms who want to take non-snapshot monthly baby photos. If you’re happy with snapshots, then this blog post is not for you. But, if you want to take beautiful, more professional-looking monthly photos, then read along.

You can take your photos with your phone, a point-and-shoot, or your DSLR. But make sure to use the same camera every month.

The step-by-step guide to your monthly baby photos: the basics

The following steps are the ones you have to decide only ONCE before your start your baby monthly photos project. Once you decide those, you should keep them exactly the same each month to ensure the consistency in your images when you put all photos together once your baby turns one.

Step 1: Decide which room you will photograph your baby each month

To ensure the uniformity of your photos, you want to choose one place in your home where you can take the photos each month. And use that spot every single time.

Here is what to keep in mind when choosing which room:

• Your main priority is to choose a room with lots of natural light. That is, large and/or multiple windows.
• If possible, choose a room that also has white walls. Avoid any room with colored walls as they will cast their color on your baby’s skin. For example, the walls in my dining room, where I take lots of photos of my son, have a lovely pastel, aqua color. The problem is: these walls makes my toddler’s skin look a bit blueish because their color is reflected on his skin.

So, for my monthly baby photos, my room of choice was our master bedroom because it has two large windows and white walls AND white furniture. Win-win!

Step 2: Decide where to place your baby + use neutral colors

Here are some ideas for where to place your baby:

• The floor on top of a blanket or milestone blanket
• Your bed
• Baby’s crib
• On a parent’s arms

Most monthly baby photos I see are of the baby laying on the ground. But as you can see from this list, you can explore other options. You can have him or her be seated too. As long as there is some back support, and you have the help of someone during the process.

Next, choose the background color your will use. That is, the bedsheet, blanket, or clothes you will be wearing as your go-to backdrop. Things to keep in mind:

• Use a background with neutral color: a beige, grey, or my favorite – plain white
• If you want to add color, you can opt for a soft pastel color. But keep in mind that a pastel color might cast a color on your baby’s skin as we talked about before. So, in doubt, stick to white or neutral and you’re good to go!
• If you background has patterns, then you need to dress your baby in clothing with solid colors – a white onesie/vest is the easiest and most classic option.

A mistake I see again and again on Instagram photos is to place the baby on a blanket with lots of colors and patterns. This makes for a very BUSY background and photo overall. Keeping a neutral background will help the viewer’s eyes to go straight to the most important part of the photo – your lovely baby!

Pro-tip for blankets: if you want to add an extra element of interest in your photos, you can opt for a blanket that has texture. Our eyes love texture in photos, plus it adds an element of depth.

Step 3: Decide which prop you’re going to use for your monthly baby photos

The general idea is to include some sort of indication of your baby’s age or milestone that indicates growth.

However, you can certainly choose to keep things SIMPLE and skip this part altogether. Once you do the yearly collage, the images will easily show your baby’s growth throughout the year without the need for any specific props.

A few options for you:

• Milestone blanket: I love these from Little Unicorn as they are more unique than the regular photo blankets you can find

• Milestone cards: I like this set because it does not only include the monthly numbers but also a variety of big developmental milestones

• Felt letter board. You can read in this blog post what to write on your board.

• A bunny from Liewood (they do not sell the bunny I have anymore). I purchased a soft bunny that was bigger than my baby so I could see my baby growing in relation to its size. As I wanted to add some décor to our nursery, I purchased a soft toy that would pair well with his room.

• These adorable soft animals from cuddle + kind. The company supports a great cause! But be sure to order it in advance as it is shipped from the US. This was actually my first option, but I wasn’t going to get it on time to my baby’s first month photos. So I went with the bunny instead.

Steps to take every month

The steps below are the ones you need to take every month when you do your monthly baby photos. These might change from time to time. But keep in mind that the final result will be a collage of all the 12 photos. So it is important to keep things as consistent as possible.

Step 1: Decide what your baby will wear

The tips here can be applied to any photoshoot you do with your baby or for your professional family photos:

• Solid color: To make sure the attention is on your baby, and not your baby’s outfit, I recommend choosing an outfit with a solid color. That is, no patterns. Or, patterns that are very soft and sublet. I also recommend to avoid large logos, writings and drawings as they are distracting.

• Neutral, pastel or muted tones: I love soft tones to soften the overall look of an image. If you prefer to have a pop of color, earthy tones are a great option. But keep in mind the background you choose. That is, if you chose a white background, then maybe dress your baby in another color, otherwise the image might look washed out.

• Patters: you can still dress your baby in an outfit with patterns. But, 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 2: 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. 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 3: Keep an eye on the composition

Here we are going to get a bit more technical. But if you want to make beautiful photos of your baby (versus just taking some snapshots), a good composition is very important. Here are my top tips.

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

Do not leave the fingers, hands, or feet out of the photo or cropped in the middle. 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. So you can have enough distance from the camera/phone and your baby to 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 depending on your lens. 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.

A few bonus tips on how to take monthly baby photos

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. 

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.

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.

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. My personal preference was to keep things natural. So I still love the fact that in many of the photos my baby was not looking into the camera, but he was looking to my husband instead. This is a small detail that make the photos more dynamic, and it adds life to them. 

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! 

What are the alternatives to milestone monthly baby photos?

When I originally wrote this blog post, I only had one child. As busy and sleep-deprived as I was, I still managed to keep up with this little photo project and take his monthly baby photos.

And I’ll be honest with you. Now that my son is 3, he LOVES to see his photo collage!

However, when my second son was born, I took out the letter board and decided to do the same. I put out the letter board and was ready to do it.

Except that… well, I ‘failed’! Caring for a newborn and a nearly-turned 2-year-old having a hard time adjusting to becoming a big brother was much more overwhelming than I expected it was going to be.

So, yes, I had to skip the monthly baby photos as I describe in this post in the following section.

And I’ll be honest with you – I felt GUILTY!

Taking these monthly baby photos was a way for me to show my sons how much I loved them and to celebrate their life with us. So being unable to do that for my second made me really, REALLY sad.

But I had to embrace the fact that my daily life became much more ‘chaotic’ than when I only had one child. My daily life was busy with tandem breastfeeding, a 2-year-long sleep deprivation, and toddler tantrums. I came to terms that this was a different season of my life.

Anyways…

If taking monthly baby photos as I describe in this post feels overwhelming to you, you’re not alone!

There is another way around that: simply commit to taking images of daily life instead on a monthly basis. Then, you can put them together in a 12-month-collage. These images won’t likely be as aesthetically pleasing as if you follow the steps from this guide. But the images will still be meaningful.

Here is a blog post I wrote on taking meaningful monthly photos of your baby.

But if you’re ready to tackle this monthly baby photos project, I invite

Taking action today

Here is an overview of the steps we covered:

• Step 1: Decide where you want to photograph your baby each month
• Step 2: Decide where to place your baby
• Step 3: Decide which prop you’re going to use (if any)

I invite you to take 5-10 minutes and already make those decisions. You only need to decide all of this once. And then you’re good to go!

What to do next?

Once you’re done implementing these 3 steps, you can read Part 2 of this monthly baby photos mini-course. This next post will go over the practical steps that you need to take during each month.