Life. Now Photography | San Francisco Bay Area Maternity, Newborn, Baby, Child and Family Custom Photography » your life. right now.

Aren’t they sweet?  One of my favorite things is receiving baby announcements in the mail.  I usually display them on our fridge for at least a month (ok, maybe longer!).  Announcements are a great way to share images of your newborn with friends and family.  Oh how I wish we’d had our photographer do our announcements!  For starters, I would’ve had access to wonderful photos of my baby.  Shhh, don’t tell anyone that I didn’t have professional photos taken of our babies.  I think I just had major pregnancy brain (you pregos out there know what I mean!), and I didn’t think to schedule a newborn session in advance.  And we all know that our pregnancy brain turns into mommy brain as soon as the baby actually arrives, and mommy brain is WORST than prego brain!!!  You’d think I could’ve just taken my own pictures of them, right?  Right, because any time that I wasn’t feeding, burping, comforting or changing the baby (which was ALL the time), all I wanted to do was try and get decent, in focus pictures of them.  In reality, all I wanted to do was sleep!!  And when I wasn’t doing that, there was the minor issue of keeping my house clean and my husband fed.  Oh yeah, and attempting to losing my baby weight.  But I digress…

I did eventually send baby announcements out.  When the baby was, oh, 4 months old!  The moral of the story?  Book your newborn sessions while you are still pregnant!  That way you are guaranteed adorable baby pictures and you can have someone else (read: not YOU) do your announcements for you!  And if you’re really organized, have your addresses ready before you have that bundle of joy.  Then all you’ve have to after the baby arrives is decide which birth announcement design you want.

Speaking of…here are a few samples of some baby announcements I’m offering.  These are all designs that I would’ve used myself.  Obviously, all text will be personalized.  And if you’d prefer a different color scheme (say, to match your baby’s nursery), we can do that, too!

Feel free to pass this information along to any pregnant friends you may have!

How many images do you have stored on your computer’s hard drive/external drive?  I have over 5,000 from this year alone (and it’s only August!!).  Of your images, how many are tangible?  Meaning you can touch them in some way shape or form.  I’m going to guess you don’t have many.  I myself struggle with this, too.  But doesn’t it defeat the purpose of taking photos and capturing these memories if no one can see them?

One of the ways I hope to differentiate LNP is by the products I will offer.  I plan on including something tangible with every session.  There will be options for those that prefer to display something on a wall as well as something for those that prefer something more handle-able.  Having photos that you and your loved ones can physically  look back on years from now is very important to me, and I want anyone that books a session with me to have that.  One of the things I’ve found that I just love are these photo boxes:

Images by Melissa Surprise, click on them to see her site. used with permission, of course :)

Aren’t these just beautiful?  I plan on ordering some for myself and I can’t wait to get my hands on them.  They can be personalized any way you want!  You can have your individual images matted (so they’re sturdier) and then display them on an easel as an alternative to having something framed.  What a simple way to show off your stuff!  You can also just grab the box with all the images inside on your way out the door and  take it to Grandma’s house to show her.  Or just leave the box on your coffee table.  It’s beautiful on it’s own, and anyone that sees it will gravitate towards it to check it out.  It’s like having your own personalized coffee table book!!!  Featuring YOU!

I’m keeping an eye out for other beautiful things, too.  So stay tuned to see what I find!

Wendy