Welcome to FAQ Friday! We post a call for questions every Thursday on our Facebook wall and select the 2 most popular questions on Friday to answer for you here! Let’s get started!
Here are our top two questions this week:
“I wonder if you could tell us what kind of wardrobe suggestions you make for family photos…and thank you for sharing so much of how you work!” ~Debbie
Mariah’s answer: Hi, Debbie! We love sharing what we do here. I usually tell families to pick one outfit first (maybe a dress that mom wants to wear), and plan the rest of the outfits around that. You can check out this guide we put together last year that helps families plan their wardrobe in 5 easy steps!
“I feel like newborn sessions are forever long and often wonder if there is something I’m doing wrong, or could be doing better (outside of the normal: heaters, white noise machines, etc). As a super busy studio, how do you stay on top of newborn sessions and make sure they don’t consume your entire day when you have other clients coming?” ~Brittany
Heidi’s Answer: Hi Brittany! I’m with you, newborn sessions are so time consuming! Our newborn sessions generally last 2-3 hours at the studio. I have definitely struggled with the time management of them over the years and now we have a great system in place. One thing we do at our studio is limit the number of newborns that we book each week (we take no more than 3 due dates in the same week). That allows us to guarantee the availability in our schedule to move them around as needed and get everyone in under 2 weeks of life. It also limits the amount of longer sessions booked in any given week so that we can maintain a great quality in all of our other work. We generally don’t have any other portrait sessions on the day of a newborn, but we schedule pre-session consultations and ordering appointments on those days so I am conscious of the time. I also try to maximize our time during the 2-3 hours of newborn sessions by taking photos most of the time, even when baby isn’t sleeping. I used to spend hours trying to get an alert newborn to sleep before I began. Now, I just go with the flow and get all of the family portraits, detail shots, swaddle the baby, and beautiful awake portraits during their alert time. Then when they finally fall asleep, I can focus on the sleepy portraits knowing I’ve already captured some great memories! By the end of 3 hours, sleep-deprived new parents are ready to get home and rest, so it is perfect timing to wrap things up. If you are ever up in Rhode Island, you should check out our workshops. We go through the whole newborn flow AND talk about how we manage them with a busy studio to run! We would love to meet you!
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