The coronavirus pandemic has changed all of us, and certainly it has shifted how we are living and working. As a photographer, I have experienced scheduling delays and a few setbacks, but all out of an abundance of caution. For us, it’s more important that we all get through this as safely as possible. So when a long-time planned newborn session presented itself, I wanted to oblige, but with those rules in place. And with some careful planning, I pulled off a very special collaboration.

Meet Liam Tevepaugh – a member of my family and a brand new baby.

Because parents Cody and Courtney are family, I didn’t want them to miss having newborn portraits taken of Liam, especially when his grandparents and other relatives haven’t been able to hold him in the hospital or when he was brought home. None of us however were comfortable with me handling him in our portrait studio or even gathering in the same space. So we concocted a unique plan wherein I cleaned and packed up one of my cameras and the lens I knew would be best and left it on their doorstep. I shared tutorials, specific camera settings and images that I had taken of other newborns to give them ideas and direction.

With some props, ideas and trial and error, they did a great job. After my camera was wiped down and returned, MY part of the collaboration was to download the images, retouch them, handle color corrections, and make all the editing adjustments.

They took my notes and suggestions about lighting, creating a cushion, where to shoot and how to pose little Liam and ran with it and I’m so happy that we could make this work. I cannot stress enough that this was an extremely unique set of circumstances and for a family that was planning to use one of our gift certificates for the baby’s first year package they were gifted.

While I have NO plans to do this again, with North Carolina slowly reopening, I do hope to begin shooting newborn sessions again soon, but outdoors. I’ve done this many times before and with the weather warming up for summer, it is entirely possible to be safe, clean, socially distanced and successful. If you’re interested in discussing an outdoor newborn, family or child photography session in the months to come, please contact us.

We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs newborns and families, special events and portraits  of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States LicenseAll photos are ©2020 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.