When I photographed my first newborn, I thought I was learning how to take beautiful photographs of babies.

I was learning much more than that. Over the past twelve years, I have photographed more than a thousand babies, worked with families from different countries and taught hundreds of photographers through workshops and mentoring. When I look back at the way I worked in the beginning, some things have changed completely. Other things have become even more important to me.

The biggest lesson has probably been that there is no single formula for a beautiful newborn photograph. When you are starting out, it is very tempting to look for one. You learn a pose, find a beautiful prop, copy a lighting setup and try to repeat the same result with the next baby. It feels safe because you know exactly what you are trying to create.

But newborns don’t work that way. Every baby arrives with a different temperament, different movements and a completely different way of responding to being photographed. A pose that worked beautifully yesterday may not be right for today’s baby. The light may need to change. The family may need something different from what you expected.

Over time, I stopped trying to make every session look the same. I became much more interested in understanding what was happening in front of me. This changed the way I think about posing, too. Posing is still an important part of newborn photography, especially in the Classic Newborn style I offer, but it is no longer the starting point of every decision. I look at the baby first, then the light, the composition and the mood of the photograph. Sometimes the right decision is to continue with a carefully planned pose. Sometimes it is to leave the baby exactly where they are and simply change my camera position.

I have also learned that parents are not an addition to a newborn session. They are part of the story. A beautifully posed photograph of a newborn can be wonderful, but there is something very different about photographing that baby in the arms of the person who has just become their mother or father. After years of working with families, I have become much more aware of these connections and of how important they are when building a complete newborn gallery.

This is one of the reasons I now offer both Classic Newborn and Natural Simple photography. They are different approaches, but neither is about following a formula. Classic Newborn gives more space to posing, styling and props, while Natural Simple allows more room for emotion, family connection and the tiny details that happen naturally.

Another lesson has come from teaching photographers. When I started teaching, I thought the most useful thing I could give someone was information. Over time, I realised that information is only the beginning. A photographer can know dozens of poses and still feel completely lost when a real baby doesn’t behave as expected.

What they really need is the ability to make decisions? Where should I stand? What is the light doing? Is this pose actually comfortable for the baby? What can I change without disturbing the baby? How do I move from this image to the next one? How do I create a complete gallery rather than a collection of unrelated photographs? – These are the questions that have shaped my own approach to newborn photography and eventually became part of the NewbornCode Method I teach through my education programs.

And perhaps the most unexpected thing twelve years of newborn photography has taught me is that the photographs I remember most are not always the most complicated ones. Sometimes it is a tiny detail. A mother’s hand. A baby’s expression. An older sibling looking at the new arrival. A quiet moment between two photographs that wasn’t planned at all.

Those are the images that remind me why I started photographing newborns in the first place. The technology changes. Cameras change. Trends change. Editing styles change. The way photographers market themselves changes. But a new parent looking at their baby for the first time hasn’t changed. And that is the part of newborn photography I never want to lose.

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