Keepin’ it Real Thursday {Eyes open shots – Sacramento Newborn Photographer}

During a recent newborn session I was trying to get a baby to settle and fall asleep and Mom asks to me, “wouldn’t it just be easier to photograph them awake?”  Good question and the answer is mostly no.  What I mean by that is if you look through my work that I post here on my site as well as on my Facebook page, you will notice that I never post images of newborns with their eyes open.  That is not my goal of a newborn session and I don’t want people/potential clients to think that it is.  My style of newborn photography is to get them in cute, sleepy newborn poses.  Period.  Now, it’s not to say that I never take eyes open shots during a session.  I do- but only when a newborn just won’t go to sleep.  I always try to go with the flow during a session, and if I’ve tried everything in my power to get the baby to sleep and they just won’t give in- I will get some eyes open shots.  I will then try and get the baby to sleep again though.

So back to the question of “wouldn’t it just be easier to photograph them with their eyes open?”  This task is not as easy as it seems.  You can’t ask a newborn to look at you.  Although a baby’s hearing is well developed by the time of birth, their eyesight not so much.  The eye to brain connection of sight develops a lot over the first 6-8 months of life.  Getting a newborn to lock eye contact with you is pretty much luck.  You get a lot of wondering eyes, cross eyed looks, and not to mention the arms flailing about.  I almost always have to wrap an awake newborn.

So I put an example of some of the not-so-great shots it took (and there were many  more) to get just one good eye contact shot.  Very cute, but not easy, and probably the one and only time you will see me post an eyes open image 😉

Thanks for stopping by!!! 🙂