Lila's First Day

I love candid portraiture, especially working with young families. One of my favorite assignments of late was to photograph a little boy meeting his newborn sister for the very first time. I traveled down to Yorktown, Virginia to meet the family at the hospital, just a couple of hours after baby Lila was born. Waiting for me in the hospital room were the father, and the mother’s parents.

Everyone was excited, and nervous at the same time. It was one of those magical moments of high anticipation, coupled with the trepidation of the unknown.

The most important thing for a photographer in these sorts of situations is to be as unobtrusive as possible, and to let the family act and react naturally. This is not just important from a moral perspective, but also from a creative one as well. The best images will always be those which reveal the heart and soul of your subjects, and that can only happen when they are completely at ease with your presence, or the lack thereof. This is obviously quite difficult to achieve within the very close confines of a hospital room, but I’ve found the best approach is usually to refrain from any photography initially. Have your camera out, of course, but don’t immediately launch into a frenzy of picture taking. Just engage in gentle conversation, as and when it’s appropriate, and pretty soon you’ll be a part of the scene. Gradually, you can start taking photographs… nothing fancy, no flash either, so as not to disturb the baby.

Just observe and capture moments as they occur. It may take a little while to work into a rhythm with your work, sort of like warming up for a race. Eventually things will begin to flow though.

 

I prefer using a decent zoom in these cases, so you can hang out in the background, but still get close in details and expressions. My favorite lens for this is a nice 70-200m F2.8IS. It’s pretty big, but it gathers light like a black hole, and that big aperture gives you such wonderful control over depth of field. The image stabilization (IS) makes it much easier to take handheld shots in low light with relatively low shutter speeds as well.

Don't forget that you are there to tell a story though. I loved this sequence of shots with the little boy, who's so wonderfully full of beans. He was so excited to see his newborn sister, but a hospital is not exactly a play ground either, and he was restless, wanting new things to explore and do. He was so patient though, and wonderfully behaved.

After you’ve captured a few decent images, show some of them to your clients, as it reassures them (and yourself) that you’re game is on. Once your subjects feel like they are in good hands, the threat of the lens becomes more like a welcome sign, and you can even get them involved in helping you take a photograph. It’s great, for instance, to have someone holding a reflector for you to improve the light on your subject. 

  

The important thing is to keep it simple, and make it fun. Great images will always fall to you when this becomes a priority.

  
 

 

I loved every minute of this work, and being with the family. I hope it shows in my photography. My very favorite image is the last one. It was just one of those magical moments which comes along once in a while.

Not one of these images was posed, with the exception of the shot with the wedding bands on baby Lila's feet, and that was in response to a personal request from my clients. This is the way I prefer to work, as interfering too much to get "the perfect shot" rarely works with anyone other than professional models. It almost always looks forced and contrived otherwise (as do most model shoots, but then again, that's by design). A photographer's creativity shows best more often in their restraint, and careful observation, rather than trying to control a situation. Something all of us can learn from I guess, including myself.