I employ no hyperbole when I say that pregnancy is a miracle. Yes, at times it is a miracle of swollen ankles and queasy stomachs and aches and pains in places you didn’t know could be sore—but all for the simple reason that you are growing and sustaining an actual human being. I think sometimes we become dull to the miracle, which might be the greatest shame of all. After all, it happens every day, all around the world. It is so commonplace as to become ordinary.

But I cannot think of an experience more extraordinary. 

Here's the big secret: you do not have to have a perfectly cleaned and decorated house in order to make your home look great. By channeling your efforts to two or three very specific locations and ignoring the rest, your house can look like everyone in it got a full 8 hours of sleep last night. That’s the magic of photography! 

The key is controlling what’s in the frame. This article will help you learn what you can shove into a corner and ignore without sacrificing the quality of your images— and what you definitely can’t skimp on!

There is something about in-home newborn lifestyle sessions that speaks so deeply to me. I’m only a year removed from those first few days at home with my own son, and each time I walk into a home to meet a brand new baby, and his or her brand new mama and daddy, I am transported back. I remember the excitement, the exhaustion, the adrenaline. I remember the wrinkly little toes and squeaky whimpers. I remember feeling on top of the world, and simultaneously buried in doubt. But I also remember the sweetness. The collective intake of breath, in the quiet moment in the morning wondering “what now?” The fumbling and figuring it out together, as a brand new family, relying on each other in ways you never had to before. 

In the story of your life, bringing home baby is the ultimate plot twist.

The pages are fast, and fierce, and slow, and gentle. They are sweet and bitter, empowering and humiliating. The best of times, and the worst of times.

This past fall, I decided do something I had been meaning to do for the past half year: get family photos taken of our new family of three. Sure, I’m a professional photographer, but you’ve heard the one about the shoemaker’s kids, right? I have a million pictures of my son, my husband, and things I’ve eaten recently. I, like pretty much every mom I know, am never in the pictures. 

I don’t like to have my picture taken. But...I desperately wanted to be in the pictures. Since becoming a mom, I’ve witnessed how babies change in a blink, and how overnight they seem to wake up and leave little pieces of their babyhood behind. And if I didn’t step in front of the camera with him to capture a few of those moments, right then and there, they’d be gone and I would regret it forever.