When you’re just getting started with newborn photography, you may not have any idea on which poses to choose for your newborn session workflow.

Let’s break down some easy tips which will greatly aid you in your first few newborn sessions. The biggest takeaway is to start simple, with easy poses that you can master, before moving on to more complex newborn beanbag poses.

Prefer to read about creating a newborn session workflow?

I remember years ago when I was first getting started in newborn photography – combing the Internet trying to find advice or tips on creating a workflow.

Because getting into your session without any ideas or any direction can be confusing and frustrating. Let me give you some ninja hacks to create your own newborn workflow so you can feel confident going into your sessions.

1. Start Simple

When you’re first getting started with newborn photography, you’re going to see so many different poses, so many different names of poses, and you’re honestly going to want to do them all.

My biggest tip and advice to you is to start simple. Just pick one or two or three poses. The easiest is usually to go from taco to side lay to flipping them on their back. Make sure that you master those poses before you start adding other ones. Otherwise, if you over-complicate it, you’re going to get confused and frustrated and you don’t want that!

2. Minimize Movement

Look at poses that do not require a lot of movement – my favorite is a wrap. Honestly, having that one wrap that you can nail will enable you to use it in so many different ways. If you wrap the baby, you can have pose them with a toddler, you can have them in a parent pose, you can pose in a bucket on their back, and you can transfer them into a bowl using that same wrap or even even adding an additional wrap to it.

Then you can take them on the beanbag in that same wrap, so with that one wrap you’ve already created five images, five different setups! And if you’re taking different angles, you’re going to have at least 30 different photos that you’ve already taken just from that one wrap. You haven’t disturbed that baby!

If you have one or 2 poses that you have mastered, you can also just add different hats or headbands or different wraps for variety.

3. Easy Transitions

There are a lot of poses which, with just minor tweaks, can be transitioned into a whole new pose. For example, if baby is in a side lay pose, a simple rotation onto their backs will bring them into a Huck Finn pose. Look for these transitions with minimal movement where you are not removing them from the beanbag, and your chances are good that baby will stay settled.

4. Be Picky!

Do you even like the pose? There are so many poses out there, and I don’t do every single pose. I simply don’t love every pose. For example, I don’t love the froggy pose, so I just don’t do it!

Just because you see it on the Internet, doesn’t mean that you have to do it! You have to remember that you are shooting for your clients … you’re not shooting for other photographers. So if it’s a pose that you don’t love or enjoy doing, you have my permission slip to skip it!

5. Get a Guide

Make sure you download our free Newborn Posing Reference Guide – you can print it out, take it along to your session, and you will know the names of all the different poses.