When is the best time to book newborn photos?

By Deep Arora · Still & Golden Photography · Frankston & South-East Melbourne

It's one of the first questions expecting parents ask, and the answer surprises most of them: the best time to book your newborn session is before your baby arrives. Here's how the timing works, why you don't need to panic about a "two week rule", and what to do if your baby is already here.

Book while you're pregnant

Most families lock in their session during the second or third trimester. Not because anything happens then, but because it takes the job off the post-birth to-do list entirely. Once your baby arrives, you'll have roughly nine hundred other things competing for your attention — the last thing you'll feel like doing at 3am is researching photographers.

Booking ahead also secures your spot. Newborn photographers can only take on a limited number of sessions per month, because every booking has to stay flexible around an unpredictable due date. If you wait until after the birth, you're hoping there's a gap in the calendar during your window.

Here's how it works with me: you book during pregnancy, I note your due date, and we pick a tentative week. When your baby arrives, you send a message when you're ready — no pressure, no countdown — and we confirm the actual date. Early arrival, late arrival, unexpected caesarean recovery: the date simply moves with your family.

The first 4 weeks after birth

Newborn sessions at Still & Golden happen any time within the first 4 weeks after birth. You may have read online that newborn photos "must" happen in the first two weeks — that rule mostly applies to posed studio photography, where photographers rely on very sleepy, curly babies for those moulded poses.

In-home, documentary-style sessions don't need any of that. I'm photographing your baby being your baby: feeds, cuddles, naps, tiny details, and the way you hold them. That works beautifully at day 5, day 15 or day 25. The 4-week window means:

• Mum gets time to recover. Birth is enormous. If week one feels too raw, we wait.
• Feeding has time to settle. Many families find week two or three noticeably calmer than the first days.
• There's room for real life. Jaundice checks, sleepless stretches, visiting grandparents — the buffer absorbs all of it.

What you keep, at any point in that window, is everything that makes newborn photos precious: the smallness, the newborn skin, the curled-up sleeping positions, the way they disappear into a parent's arms.

"Our baby is already here — is it too late?"

No. If your baby is under 4 weeks old, get in touch today and I'll do everything I can to fit you in — last-minute newborn sessions happen more often than you'd think.

And if your baby is older than 4 weeks? You haven't missed the boat, you've just moved into a different (equally gorgeous) season. A family session captures the early months beautifully — babies who have found their smile, their chub and their personality photograph wonderfully. The best time for photos is always the season you're actually in.

A quick timing checklist

• Second trimester: ideal time to research and book. You're past the exhausting first weeks of pregnancy and not yet in the final stretch.
• Third trimester: still a great time to book — most of my families confirm in this window.
• Baby is here, under 4 weeks: message me now; we'll likely make it work.
• Baby is over 4 weeks: book a family session and capture the season you're in.

Want to know how the session itself runs? Read preparing your home for a newborn session, or see the full details on the newborn photography page.