Baby Photography - Using Props

 

A range of props, particularly for personal portraits will be useful, such as flowers, teddy bears, dolls, hats, balls etc. limited only by your imagination! Obviously if you would like to continue being mobile and traveling these will be smaller, however in case you have the luxury of a studio you can use a vast assortment of props. For instance some of the props I use include, baby bathrooms, rocking horses, skateboards, bikes, balls and bats and many different others. I find an ornamental baby bath an excellent prop, it not only looks good but it stops the child moving too far! I typically set the tub on a table about two foot off the ground, the dining table is draped with a very simple sheepskin fur and then adorned with some cheap netting cloth, some of which is overlapped to the bath. Any prop much like a miniature bath is equally as useful, for example a significant cooking tin or storage crate. 

 

 

 

Obviously with this kind of container you want to pad it out using soft material. It also a wonderful touch to utilize some white netting to fluff around the container. As I said over the biggest advantage of a container is that it includes the child from going! Try this with your next take, you'll be pleasantly surprised at it's potency to root on the baby in one spot! Last minute straightforward props can turn a normal image into something special. One of the simplest and best hints I can give you in this respect is to place a baseball cap onto the young baby's head. What could otherwise be a normal shot could be become a memorable and amusing shot the parents will treasure for years, only from the quick addition of a baseball cap! Props come in all shapes and sizes, you may use a prop bigger than the topic! You might imagine this would appear awkward, but it can show the loving side of a young child cuddling their (giant!) Beloved soft toy. Remember photography is about feelings, it's about sparking that emotion in parents through the creativeness on your images. Ideally if you are posing groups of people alongside the baby, you'd want to use posing stools of varying heights. 

 

 

 

By way of example if you would like to shoot mum dad and infant it could possibly be that dad is very tall and mum very tiny. You can get around this by sitting father on a smaller posing stool. Many photographers use a much less expensive but just as powerful alternative, bottle crates. These could be arranged and stacked at a variety of lengths and heights and draped with fabric like that of your own background. If you buy no additional props to your baby photography both I would recommend is a little baby tub and a large soft bean bag. The bean bag is also great for positioning very young infants in a way which allows them to truly feel safe and comfortable and lets you root them to one place. The curvature on the back is perfect for them to lean over and also the height of the spine is ideal for this era. If you're searching for ideas for the choice of props, look at some of the infant shots in mail-order catalogs.check them  here