A short while back I took a few studio shots of a couple and their new baby, it's something that my own small one (as well as a couple of friend's children) has been subjected to and I found it really enjoyable. It's a different pressure to photographing something as fast moving and busy as a wedding and also very different to my normal studio work which involves furniture and jewellery!

There's a different challenge in keeping a baby happy and smiling during a photoshoot and although all of the couples that I have worked with so far have bathed and fed them just before I get there it's still tricky when the babies decide that they've had enough. I found it more important than usual to keep relaxed throughout and to work around the needs of the client.

Saying that, we had a lot of fun on this shoot. The mum and dad have a great sense of humour and we spent most of our time laughing. This helped a huge amount and we quickly found that if we were all having a good time it helped their daughter enjoy herself as well. Obviously I had to be ready and not relax too much, because the second she was smiling and happy then it was back to work!

I was pretty lucky in that they had a nice large white-painted wall and ceiling which made my job a lot easier. It helped a lot in the first two photos in this blog to make the background clutter-free and nice, white and clean.

I had gone with a plan and even a few drawings (!) of the sort of poses that I thought might work. This helped me to keep calm and make sure that I had taken all the photos that I knew would turn out well.

We ended up with a pretty healthy mix of 'nice but slightly posed' photos which they requested or I suggested and a few photos taken during happy and relaxed moments. These caught some great smiles from the wee one and although I took only the Sigma 24-70 it proved itself again to be a great lens for most situations.