Newborn photography of 16-day-old Louis

New parents Jemma and Leigh wanted to capture and celebrate the first few weeks of their son’s life with some gentle family and individual pictures.

After nine months of excited anticipation, two became three. Louis was born on Sunday 27 May, weighing 7 lbs 1 oz. Just over two weeks later, his proud and besotted parents brought him to my newborn photography studio for his first professional portraits.

Over the next couple of hours we chatted, laughed and cuddled Louis as we created a series of beautiful images of this gorgeous new family. These are a few of my favourites from our photography session:

Jemma and Leigh are from Upper Heyford, near Bicester. They are already settling into their new roles as parents, and I can see they are the warmest, calmest and loveliest mum and dad a child could wish for.

We opted for clean, simple and timeless monochrome outfits and backgrounds for the family shots, taking time to capture mum and dad on their own with Louis, too:

Louis is still waking up for several feeds during the night, but you couldn’t tell that mum and dad are tired – doesn’t Jemma look simply amazing? You can really feel her love and protectiveness for Louis in this image.

I love this soft kiss from father to son, and how gently Leigh is cradling Louis in his hands. For me, the aim of a great portrait is to make the viewer feel something. My hope is that when Louis looks at this image many years from now he will feel just how much his dad treasured him right from the start.

This is a family portrait with a twist – all our attention is directly to Louis’ perfect little face, with mum and dad gazing down towards him. Of course, we want to see mum and dad’s faces in some portraits, too, so that’s what we did for our next shot:

Next it was over to Louis to steal the show, with a series of individual newborn portraits.

I love how chilled out Louis looks here, with his head resting on his hands while sleeping in a bucket of hand-dyed wool curls. Newborn safety is my absolute priority, so dad supported Louis’ head at all times while we took this (and then I removed dad in Photoshop). Please don’t try this at home!

Some of my favourite images are the simplest: one colour, one wrap and one delightful baby. This keeps all the focus of the image on Louis’ face.

This little teddy bear is tiny – the perfect size for Louis to cuddle up with in this image! You can see how perfect Louis’ fingers are here – a lovely detail for his parents to remember and treasure.

Lastly, we captured this simple black and white portrait of Louis nestling in his dad’s safe, strong hands:

Again, all is not quite as it seems, so please don’t try to replicate this at home!

After seeing the above image as a sneak peek after the session, Leigh said:

“Thank you Sarah, an amazing picture of our wee man, look forward to seeing them all next week. He was chilled but you were super calm and caring too, great effort. ??. Thank you.”

If you’re interested in newborn photography for your baby and would like to find out more, please get in contact by emailing [email protected] or submitting the form below:

Sarah Plater is a newborn portrait photographer based in Bicester, Oxfordshire.

(c) Sarah Plater Photography