A friend of mine recently asked for some advice on how to make some great images of his newborn baby.

“We’re having our first child in a couple of weeks and I just started a photography course. I’m looking for some tips on getting some decent shots. You being a Dad AND an accomplished shutterbug, I thought I might pick your brain a bit. It was suggested to me to pick up a 50mm 1.8 lens. I have a 40D which puts the lens at approx 80mm after crop factor. Obviously flash probably shouldn’t be used, so I was wondering if you could please toss a little guidance my way.”

I quickly came up with a few great tips that I wanted to share here too:

1. Consider Black and White, and use Tight Depth of Field - Brand new Babies are often blotchy and scaly and if you photograph them in color then they tend to look funny. Black and White images can hide lots of that stuff. So does a really large aperture and tight cropping. This is where a lens like the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 comes in. It is very inexpensive (around $100) and has a very wide maximum aperture that allows you to highlight a sweet spot of the scene, such as the eyes or the face of the baby. (I wouldn’t actually shoot it at 1.8 because the depth of field would be so narrow that much of the image would look blurry. If you use something like f/2.8 then you can really bring the attention to the part of the image that you want, while still giving yourself a chance of making the image in focus).
2. 
   Move Closer - When you think you’re close enough, take another step closer! A series of tightly cropped shots are often much better than trying to show everything in one image. And portrait where the subject almost completely fill the frame are almost always better than images where the subject is small in the frame. Having said that, make sure you shoot a little bit of everything, from really wide to very tight just to make sure you capture everything that you might want to remember later.
3. Shoot the Details – Baby hands and feet are really cute, so don’t forget to make some nice images of them. Make sure you also get a few shots of the hospital details that you will only see in the first few days. The birth announcement, the name card on the bassinet, the wrist band (security ID) on Baby’s arm or leg, etc. You might also want get a few images of the doctors, nurses, and any other people in the hospital that make your life better while you’re there. The key is to have a camera with you at all times for the first few days.
4. Use Window Light on a Cloudy Day - After the initial excitement of Baby’s arrival drops off, you’ll want to make some great portraits while the baby is still tiny. It’s still winter in our neck of the woods and we’ve had lots of those foggy days lately where the light coming in the window is extremely soft and bright white. This is fantastic light for portraits. Set baby up in a blanky (or in mom’s arms) near the window and use that light to your advantage. This is much easier than trying to make light from a flash look good because you can see what you’ve got before actually taking the picture. Try it, you’ll like it!

These are all great ways to make sure you get some great images of your baby and some of the details of her arrival.You’ll look back on these images many many times over the coming years, so you really should try to do it right!

A few more thoughts about 50mm lenses:

I love mine and I use it all the time. In fact I have two of them; an older 50 f/1.8 and a brand new Canon 50mm f/1.4. I really love the 1.4 version because it focuses extremely quickly and it’s incredibly sharp. The 1.8 is also very good (especially for the price), and I happily used it for years before upgrading, but it focuses really slowly, especially in low light. The good news is that really little babies don’t move very quickly so you can set up every shot very carefully and get your focus bang on! Either one of them make fantastic portrait lenses because the focal length is just right for making images that look pretty natural to the human eye (ie. it is very similar to what we see with our own eyes). But they also allow very tight DOF which lets you to blur out the distractions in the background. I definitely recommend buying one if you have the cash.

I’d love to hear what has worked well for you when making portraits of your children (or your clients children). Hit me in the comments below!