A couple of weeks ago I met this family for a newborn photo session in South Orange.  It was a wonderful way for me to start my day – little Ms. S was absolutely beautiful and her parents were so down-to-earth and friendly.  The Mom was absolutely stunning – I cannot believe how great she looked just weeks after giving birth!   And as an added bonus this family has two HUGE dogs so I, being a dog-person that I am, was in heaven!

Little Ms S. was an ‘older’ newborn – as it often happens at this age, she was too excited about all the commotion and having her first portaits done that she did not want to go to sleep.  So I decided to go with the flow and captured a lot of wide-awake shots with her parents.   I’ve photographed newborns a lot of times but I never get tired of witnessing the love connections and tender moments between parents and their brand new babies.  These moments are always SO special and I feel really privileged to be able to capture and add to the families ‘memory bank’ -as one of my favorite photographers says.

I love this shot of the whole family – including the dogs:)

Samantha’s Mom loved the images of a newborn in a tutu from my website and I happily replicated them:

Samantha has the most beautiful nursery I’ve ever seen!  It looked like it belonged in a catalog with personalized wall art and a little chair, tons of books and stuffed animals.   Love for her was radiating from every single thing in that room:)

It took us a while to convince Samantha to go down for a nap. We tried everything: from a super cool Lullaby Renditions CD, to rocking, using a hair-dryer, and the womb-like white noise app I have on my iPhone. Eventually our persistence paid off,  Samantha fell asleep and I was happily snapping away typical newborn images that her parents wanted to get.   It was well worth the effort, as you can see below – she is a beauty!

From time to time one of the dogs would come in to check in on me, but I think by the end of the session I earned his trust:)  I love that I was able to capture both family lifestyle as well as traditional newborn images for this family!