5 Reasons to Use the Same Newborn and Baby Photographer for Your Baby's First Year Pictures

Your baby's first year is the time of the most rapid change of their lives (this side of the womb, that is)! At OGP we love documenting that first year at just the right stages so that you can remember that blur of 12 months in the years to come. We love being New Orleans' favorite family photographer, and that starts with the littlest newborn photos!

When you're choosing your newborn photographer, keep in mind that ideally you'll be working with this photographer over the next 12 months and beyond, entrusting them with your baby's first year memories. These portraits are so important - you can't go back and have them remade! Here are some things to consider in choosing a baby photographer:

Using the same family photographer for your baby's first year ensures you get:

1. Consistency in style and quality

This is so important, especially for that album at the end of the year with images from each session in it. You want to be able to work with a photographer who can create a beautiful, heirloom album for you that spans each session from the first year, showing your baby's growth. You'll want consistent overall style, which can include editing technique, color palette, lighting patterns, camera lenses and angles, etc. Engaging the same photographer for each session ensures you'll have the same consistency in style.

2. Building Trust and Relationship

Being photographed, and allowing your little baby to be photographed, is an intimate experience. You need a photographer that you trust and whose process, and way of serving clients, you feel comfortable with. You're going to be seeing this person and her team several times over the year, so you want to feel confident and at ease with your choice.

3. Special Packages and Credits

Most photographers offer special collections and packages for their baby's first year clients. At OGP, our Baby's First Year clients actually now get a FREE custom-stitched, handmade felt album for us to place their purchased portraits in from each of their sessions at maternity, newborn, 4 months, 8 months, and 12 months! They also get an additional art credit to spend at their ordering appointments for each session. You can see examples of our felt albums on our Instagram.

4. Convenience

The first year is hard. The first year is busy. The first year is HORMONES. Make it easier on yourself by hiring someone who will pre-schedule appointments for you or remind you when it's time to come in, someone you can text when a thought pops into your head, and someone whose team members know you and your family. Scheduling multiple sessions with different photographers sounds like a logistical nightmare - streamline the process by sticking with a photographer you know and love. Bonus points if the photographer will do consultations in your home, pick up and deliver to you, and install art in your home (psst...OGP does all those things!)!

5.  THE MOST IMPORTANT REASON... Knowing Your Baby

I think this is one of the most important reasons to choose the same photographer for every session in your baby's first year: knowing your baby's personality. Because that, in turn, helps me photograph them in a way that documents YOUR baby as you know and love them; not just what your baby looks like.

I have one little girl client who is now 12 years old, and for more than a decade of photographing her, at every. single. session. I have a picture of her doing what her dad and I now call "pirate eye". Just imagine a pirate saying "ARGHHH, me matey", and that's the face. And she has honestly made it at her newborn session (where I thought it was gas), at her 4 month session (where I thought it was muscle development), and her 8 month session (where I was like, ok this is starting to be funny), at her 1 year session (where her parents and I were like "IT'S THE PIRATE EYE AGAIN"), and at EVERY. SESSION. SINCE. I don't have to ask her to do it. No one tells her to or refers to it in any way. I honestly forget about it until she does it really quickly and I'm like, "Oh yeah, ok, Pirate Eye 2023, check." So that's the best story I can tell you about having the same photographer who knows your baby, who grows into your kid. I guarantee another photographer probably would have culled the (admittedly kind of awkward) pirate eye image, not realizing that it was actually a really special memory to this family.

So whomever you choose, make sure it's someone you love, who will love you and your kids back. It shows in the pictures.

And because you can see our baby pictures all over our website portfolio, please enjoy a snippet of pirate eye here. ;)