pinterest

Pinterest Beware! – Utah Newborn Photographer

 want to spend a moment to talk about Pinterest.

Who doesn’t love spending countless hours among the cooking, scrapbooking, decorating and photography boards of pinterest.  My sweet husband is outside building an adorable spider web out of plastic wrap right now.   Where did he come up with this amazing Halloween decoration?  Yup, you guessed it – Pinterest!  If you take a gander into the boards of Two Color Photography’s Pinterest, you’ll find humor boards, organization boards, fitness boards, and yes photography inspiration boards.  You’ll also find boards full of ideas for photography locations, ideas for what to wear for your next session, and boards of some my work.  I love pinterest!

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So why is this blog titled Pinterest beware?

In most any other session – bridals, family, seniors – getting ideas from your clients with suggestions they found on pinterest is not a problem.  However, in the world of newborn photography, getting a pinterest board from a client with beautiful ideas that they want to use for their newborn makes us a little queasy inside.

Before everybody gets upset with me, let me explain why!

When perusing the halls of pinterest, you are seeing hundreds of photographers beautiful and creative ideas for a newborn session.  Let’s say you select your favorite 10 that you’d love to see done on with your new bundle.  These photographers did it, why can’t mine?  Here’s the problem: these 10 images were done by 10 different photographers with 10 different newborns during 10 different sessions.  Please remember these 10 adorable poses were not achieved by one single photographer during one newborn session.

When you are deciding who you want to document that small window of time in your baby’s life when they are sleepy and tiny and delicate, I’m sure you talked to your friends to get referrals, googled “Utah newborn photographer”, or searched social media.  Chances are you didn’t select your photographer without first seeing – and falling in love with – their work and their style.

As photographers, we spend hours researching our favorite photographers and creating a style that is unique to each of us.  In the 12 years since I began specializing in newborn photography, I have created a flow to my sessions that allows me to guarantee my client a certain amount of images.  It’s a seamless, smooth transition from pose to pose that keeps the baby comfortable, warm and sleepy.  I dictate my entire session on the needs of your baby.  If you have fallen in love with my style from my social media sites or my website, you have fallen in love with that flow.

The struggle as a newborn photographer is when we are presented with 10+ prop style is this:

  1.  The chances of your baby sleeping through more than 2 different prop poses is very, very slim.  Each time we lift, place, adjust your sweet baby, we are risking the chance of waking the baby.  It can sometimes take up to 45 minutes to get the baby rocked back to sleep.   Placing an awake, alert baby in basket or other prop decreases the ability to safely execute the pose, and safety is #1 for a newborn photographer.
  2. The pose you see on pinterest is that specific photographer’s best work of an entire session.  These poses aren’t as easy as they seem to appear on pinterest.  We’ve allllll had a pinterest fail, and photographers are no different. Another photographer may have had all the stars align to nail that pose.  It’s hard to align stars! We’ve all seen that meme:
  3. The time it takes to set up a large handful of prop poses is detrimental to a successful session.  You don’t want to be in a 5 hour newborn session any more than your photographer does.  Your photographer doesn’t want to be in a 5 hour newborn session any more than your newborn does.  It’s not good for mom, it’s not good for baby.  If it takes 45 minutes to recreate each pinterest pose, you could be in a session for 450 minutes.  That is too long.

4.  A photographer works hard to stand out in an over saturated market.  The best compliment a photographer can get is when they are told that “the moment I saw that photo, I knew it was yours – before I even knew it was yours.”  If you gander through my website, you’ll feel my style repeated through each of my photos.  My style is as important to me as my camera.  I could spend hours copying the style of all the photographers on pinterest, but I would lose me.  The style that I have created over my many years in photography is what sets me apart from others.

If you don’t like my style, that’s okay. There are photographers out there who do amazing work.  Their style may be closer to your needs, and that’s great.  We’re a wonderful little family, we photographers, we love to see each other succeed.  Asking a photographer to emulate 10 different photographer’s poses from pinterest is asking us to set aside who we are to try and be someone else.

So am I saying if you like pinterest poses, I am not the photographer for you?

No. Absolutely not.

What if you love my style but you want to incorporate pinterest poses?

If you have been spending hours on pinterest enjoying the beautiful poses found there, fantastic!!  Narrow down those amazing 10 poses to your all time favorite 2.  I love having my creativity stretched and seeing a pose, being inspired by it, and then giving it a spin that allows me to still be me. A photographer wants to give you beautiful art of your newborn, while still being true to who they are as an artist!

I pray that this post is taken in the way it is intended.  I have had many clients bring handfuls of pinterest ideas, and I’ve done my best to incorporate these into our session, and we’ve made amazing pictures from them!  As I look at all the sessions I’ve done this year (so far a little over 80 with over a dozen due before the end of the year), the ones that have been easiest on the baby and the parents and the photographer, are the ones that allowed me to work within the flow I’ve created through years of working with babies.

I want to incorporate your ideas and your style as well, which is why I have you fill out the  Newborn Pre-Session Questionnaire before your session, so that I can create images that you’ll be proud to hang on your walls.

I love your newborns and am so honored that you trust me with their safety.  Creating art that helps you remember that beautiful time when they are so new to the world is what I love!

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