MomShots

Yoanna's beautiful daughter in the NICU. Photo courtesy Yoanna.

I received an email last night from Yoanna, a new mother in London. This is what she said:

My daughter was born July 24th, 2009 and she is still in the NICU here in London.. I have taken some photos of her but havent been able to take “good” ones because she is on so many tubes (ng and breathing tube) and 4 iv’s, and sometimes in the isolette. Do you have any idea how I can take memorable pics during this time? What should I focus on? She is near term now, 6lbs 2 ounces, 9 months gestation…. I was able to take a couple good photos before like with my wedding ring around her wrist and the huge pacifier-to-face ratio lol….. (poor peanut) lol Anyway, any help would be wonderful. thanks

First of all, Congratulations on your daughter’s birth! What a joyous occasion and cause for celebration. I know I speak for all of us when we say how excited we are for this little person to join your family and begin her journey with you.

Thanks for sending me the email, Yoanna. I think this is such a great question for MomShots! It’s what we are all about - learning to take better pictures of our kids in all situations. Since I don’t have any personal NICU experience I started with my research; doing Google searches, looking at Flickr examples, asking people I knew who had NICU experience and other photographers. It was really interesting and fun to hear these stories and get ideas that might help Yoanna and any other person who may be dealing with a similar situation.

Some of the challenges that come with taking great MomShots of your child might be the blue light that is often present in the NICU, even the florescent and the myriad of LED lights could pose a challenge as well. Other challenges might be tubes, cords and other medical gadgets and gizmos that obstruct the view of your beautiful child. The inability to move your child around to find a more subtle background or pose them in a more photogenic position might be a challenge as well. I think these challenges can pretty much all be overcome with some planning, discussion with the nurses and preparation.

The blue light may or may not be an issue for you, either way, setting your white balance is a definite must! You might be able to get along fine with the auto white balance setting on your camera but if that is not working you will need to use your custom settings. I can’t tell you how to do that for your specific camera so this is a chance for you to pull out your user manual and follow the instructions. If you have specific questions about definitions or terminology that might be confusing in the manual, I am sure I can help you with that.

Another way to combat the blue lights is to shoot black and white. Black and white is really flattering to babies. Babies are often born with red splotches on their skin that take a few weeks, and often even months, to go away. This can be easily camouflaged with black and white photos. You can either set your camera to shoot black and white or you can change it to black and white after you have uploaded to your computer. Personally, I almost always change to black and white when I post process my images instead of switching my camera to the black and white setting. I feel that it gives me more options that way. If I decide I really do like the image in color I can keep it or play around with the colors to make it more like my intended goal.

You may need to increase your ISO setting, depending on how much light is available. If the room is dim, with not much light present, a high ISO setting will help you get more details. The thing to remember is that the higher the ISO, the more grain or noise your shots will have.

The amount of noise depends on your camera so you need to be familiar with what kind of results you get at different ISO settings. With my camera (Nikon D-40x), I get pretty good results at an ISO of 800 but when I boost it past that it gets pretty noisy and I begin to loose detail. You will need to play with that and see what works for you.

If your ISO speed isn’t doing you any favors you may find good luck using a tripod to hold your camera still so you can take pictures with a slower shutter speed. That way you can set your ISO speed lower so you don’t have any noise and then with your slow shutter speed you can take clear shots of your sleeping baby.

Another kind of fun idea might be to use a tripod and take a low light shot showing all the lights that are on the baby. For example, if they have those little blood oxygen counter light thingys (like how technical I am?) attached to a toe or finger you might be able to get a close of up that light shining through in the dark.

Along the same lighting line of thought comes additional light sources such as your on camera flash, and off camera flash, portable studio lighting, etc. Different hospitals have different regulations regarding flash photography and you will need to discuss that with you child’s care providers. A white sheet or hospital baby blanket could be used to bounce light and as a backdrop.

Wedding Ring in NICU. Photo courtesy Yoanna.

Yoanna, I love the idea of putting your wedding ring on her arm. This shows just how small and precious she is. Showing perspective like this is a really good idea. Other ways you can do that might be to have your husband hold one foot between his fingers and take a shot of that. I am sure her little foot would be teensy tiny in comparison to daddy’s giant hand. Also at feeding time, if she is being bottle fed perhaps you can show your hand, her face and the bottle in one shot. If you have a favorite toy for her it might be fun to to place that next to her and compare sizes. Or the foot of the stuffed animal in comparison to her foot. Anything that shows perspective and how much she is growing is a good idea.

One suggestion I received from a friend on Twitter was to photograph the baby next to one specific toy each week. This way you will be able to see how much she has grown over time.

My friend, Trina who had twins in NICU, gave this suggestion:

Schedule your visit for diaper change time, if they are very little they will barely let you touch them at other times. If you really plot ahead maybe at bath time they might take some of the wires off.

Another friend, Jenny who also is the mommy of twins who were in NICU, gave this great advice:

Take lots and lots of pictures and focus on things like little hands and toes (if tubes and wires are covering the face). Depending on the seriousness and the shape that the baby is in it can vary greatly. Some babies can be held all the time and fed and everything is normal, just have to be monitored. Others have to be touched carefully, and not at all sometimes. Towards the end of our NICU stay the babies were in open cribs and had no wires or tubes on. They just had to had their temp. taken every so often and be observed during feedings and all that, so it could be just like taking any other newborn hospital pics.

Another small piece of advice I can give is to think about backgrounds. I do not know if hospitals have regulations about different fabrics that can or can not touch the babies but if that is not an issue, think about bringing your own cute receiving blankets, pieces of interesting cloth that you might spot on the shelves of the fabric store or other any other material that might make an interesting background for detail shots such as feet and hands. Fleece and faux fur makes a great background for photos because it tends not to bounce the light all over the place and adds interesting texture.

Take lots and lots of pictures from all sorts of different angles. Shots from above, shots with your baby’s nurse, shots looking through the crib, shots looking up at her face from her feet, diagonal shots and anything else you can possibly imagine to try to capture interesting shots that you will enjoy looking at in the future.

One twin in NICU. Photo courtesy Trina Grant.

I think my standard advice of getting really close is a good idea here and could really enhance photos taken in the NICU as well. Play with your zoom feature, zoom lens or just move your camera really close to the baby and grab great shots of tiny toes and noses.

Try adjusting your aperture to play with depth of field (low aperture number means you can focus on one specific thing and everything else will be blurred) to get some interesting shots of details.

My very last piece of advice is to pull up Flickr or Photobucket and even Google (all though I had much more interesting results on the other two sites). Do a search for photos that are tagged with NICU and see what comes up. There are a few really great shots that might inspire and excite you.

Thank you very much for this great question, Yoanna. I really enjoyed learning about this and think I might be a bit more prepared the next time I am in the hospital with the need to take photos! I wish both you and your sweet little girl good health and hope that this is a little bit helpful for you and any other parents who find themselves in a similar situation.