Welcome to the second installment of Baby’s Growth Stages Captured in Photography by Shannon Kietzman from My Baby Photos.

Now that your newborn has finally arrived, it is important to capture photographs within the first couple of weeks of your child’s birth. Your newborn baby will be changing rapidly over the first several weeks following his or her birth, so you want to be certain to get some great photos to help you always remember those first two weeks.

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When taking newborn photos, you want to focus on capturing the newborn’s sweet innocence and fragility. When taking photos of your newborn along with other subjects, you should also strive to capture the amazement and deep, heartfelt love that person feels from the presence of the child. To that end, there are five primary types of photos you might want to take. These include:

• The Close Up of Special Parts
• The Motherly Bond
• The Sleeping Child
• The Father’s Love
• The Sibling Shoot

The Close Up of Special Parts

Taking close up photos of certain parts of the newborn is a great way to communicate the frailty of the child as well as to show just how tiny a newborn child really is. Taking a photo of the newborn being cradled by one hand, such as the photo below, is a great way to illustrate how small a newborn really is.

You might also take close ups of just the newborn’s delicate fingers or toes, such as the photo below that shows just how tiny the child’s foot really is.

The photo below is another beautiful example, as it shows the fine detail of the tiny fingers while also showing the newborn in the background.

The Motherly Bond

Just as with maternity photos, newborn photos should also include shots that help demonstrate the bond between the mother and her newborn child. The simply black and white photo below depicts the love the mother feels for her child, while the nudeness of the newborn helps to further demonstrate the child’s sweet innocence.

You can also capture the motherly bond before you ever leave the hospital, which also helps capture the image of your newborn within those first few precious days. The photo below manages to capture the mother’s without needing to show her face. Rather, the mother’s nudity and closeness to her newborn as she bows her head to admire her new child communicates the bond clearly.

The Sleeping Child

Let’s face it, a newborn child doesn’t do a whole lot more than eat and sleep for the first few weeks of life! As such, every newborn photo album should contain at least one picture of the child as he or she slumbers. The black and white photo below does an excellent job of placing the focus on the child’s face and creating a dreamy quality with the blurred frame.

The color photo of the newborn shown below, on the other hand, makes creative uses of light to help draw attention to the newborn’s face and to create a sense of peace and tranquility.

The Father’s Love

When taking newborn pictures, you also need to keep in mind the importance of the child’s father. The juxtaposition of a strong, manly father cradling his small, fragile child can create a strikingly moving photo, such as the black and white photo shown below.

A father photo can also be sweet and whimsical, as the photo below. Here, the subjects clearly have not been primped and prepared for a photo. Rather, it is a genuine, spontaneous moment between a father and a child.

The Sibling Shoot

If your newborn has a sibling, photos depicting the love the sibling feels for the newborn child can be very touching. Photos of the older child kissing the newborn are particularly adorable, such as the one below.

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Shannon Kietzman is a successful author and blogger over at My Baby Photos, a website dedicated to Kids and Kids photography.

I would like to thank Joanna Sweeny, Pawel Loj, Jun Aviles, Kimberly Kwan, sean dreilinger, Fred Hoysted, Carlos Solana, Roberta Zingg, Jennifer Pack and its*me*red,  for making their image available under a Creative Commons license. This article would not have been the same without them.