We’re not sure anything beats the anticipation of your baby’s arrival, especially if they are your first! It’s a very good idea not to wait too long to start thinking about their nursery! Not only will you have some decisions to make, but you’ll also likely need to order a few things — like a newborn photography session — and make some cosmetic changes to a room. There are so many places you can find inspiration from when it comes to ideas for your Cascades, VA area dream nursery, and, as always, the Internet is a great starting point!

Taking maternity photos keeps us on our toes when it comes to all things pregnancy, including newborn nurseries. In case you find yourself needing some nursery ideas and inspiration, we’ve put together a list of sites you might want to explore. It’s always fun to look! Also, don’t forget to check out some retailers’ websites for more ideas. Pottery Barn Kids is one great store to check out online, but they aren’t the only out there.

* Project Nursery: A great site for everything from maternity outfits to advice, vendors, and giveaways!
* HGTV of course! It’s a no-fail site for all things related to home and garden, but you can find great ideas for your dream nursery as well.
* Pinterest will take you in all sorts of directions, so it does take time to wade through all of the possibilities. There is always something for everyone on Pinterest!
* Parents.com offers a variety of perspectives on nursery ideas including real life inspiration. It’s interesting to see what other people are doing for their dream nurseries.
* houzz.com is one of our perennial favorites for anything house related but even for nurseries. There are over 10,000 pages of information related to nurseries on here!

Don’t forget to add Ever After Baby Portraits for your newborn photography! Add scheduling your Newborn Session to your list of things to do before the baby arrives! We’re centrally located in Northern Virginia, in Cascades, VA, and we work with clients throughout the Northern Virginia area doing both maternity and newborn photography. Take the opportunity to beautiful, unique and memorable newborn portraits of your baby’s first week of life!

Other posts in this series:
Decorating the Nursery
 

Baby Photography, Baby Photographer, Newborn Photography

Ever After Baby Portraits is comprised of Mindy Belcher and Joriana Belcher Anderson, a mother-daughter baby photography team located in Cascades, VA in Northern Virginia. We specialize in timeless and emotive fine art family portraits, including newborn and baby portraits. Family means everything and capturing those precious moments to preserve forever will mean family heirlooms for you to share for years to come.

Best,
Mindy & Joriana – Contact Us!

View Our Portfolio | Ever After Baby Portraits

It’s perfectly reasonable for families to ask themselves if they should or shouldn’t invest in a professional photographer to do portraits for them! We understand! So, as a specialist in family, children’s, and newborn photography in the Cascades, VA area, let us explain a few of the many reasons why you should hire a professional photographer:

• Rather than adding something else to your to-do list days after giving birth when you’re going to be exhausted, let someone else take professional portraits of your precious new baby.
• You won’t regret having professional pictures of your baby just days after birth. Your baby will never again be so tiny as to fit in your hands!
• You can call before you give birth and schedule a session for the first week of your baby’s life when they’re perfect for a newborn photo session!
• We are highly-skilled, highly-trained specialists in newborn photography.
• We have the equipment needed to capture a perfect picture because we can control lighting, exposure, color, etc.
• Each portrait session is pre-planned and pre-designed around your baby before you even arrive in our studio.
• AS experienced professionals, we have been working with newborns for years! (We’re also moms.)
• We make safety a priority for all newborn photos, as well as babies and children of all ages. Everything is perfectly choreographed so that your child is safe throughout the entire session!
• We have the post-production photo editing software to enhance the picture further.
• We will take our time throughout your session and devote our attention to composing beautiful and meaningful newborn portraits which you will treasure for many years.
• Professional fine art photography like ours is nothing like taking pictures at home. We elevate photography to an artistic level that no hobby photographer could do without the proper skills, training, and equipment!
• Lastly, we insist on including the new parents in at least a few of our photos during a newborn or baby session. If you’re taking your own pictures at home, it’s pretty difficult to be in the pictures yourself!

Having a precious newborn is one of those important and beautiful moments in life worthy of hiring a professional photographer and investing in newborn photography. We are one of the leading family and newborn photographers in the Northern Virginia area, including Cascades, VA, and we would love to work with you and your newborn!

Baby Photography, Baby Photographer, Newborn Photography

Ever After Baby Portraits is comprised of Mindy Belcher and Joriana Belcher Anderson, a mother-daughter baby photography team located in Sterling, VA in Northern Virginia, near Cascades, VA. We specialize in timeless and emotive fine art family portraits, including newborn and baby portraits. Family means everything and capturing those precious moments to preserve forever will mean family heirlooms for you to share for years to come.

Best,
Mindy & Joriana – Contact Us!

View Our Portfolio | Ever After Baby Portraits

The beauty and value of newborn photography are indisputable. Newborn pictures are precious opportunities to capture your baby’s image in its earliest days of life. As Northern Virginia photographers in the Brambleton, VA area, we are often asked how we get such beautiful newborn portraits.

We thought we’d write down five things which lie behind the success of our newborn portraiture. We hope you enjoy them.

Personalizing & Styling Your Newborn Portraits

We can personalize your baby’s session to reflect what you want – within reason and safety, of course! Just as with all our portrait sessions, there’s a lot of thought and planning put into each session. We can do “posed” pictures of your baby, where they are sleeping and looking perfectly angelic and adorable. We can do a more casual and candid portrait of the parents holding their baby in a loving and natural way. And, of course, we can do both types of pictures either in our studio, your home, or in our stunning Outdoor Portrait Park (although we prefer to reserve our outdoor portrait park for when baby is a bit older!) The options are endless, and we can discuss them during our intake discussion!

Talk to us! If you have specific requests, share them with us!

As newborn photographers we can’t create portraits you want if we don’t know what that is. We love hearing our clients’ ideas! When you call us to schedule a session with us, we want to get to know you and understand your vision for your portrait whether it’s a newborn session, senior portrait, or family session. We do most of our newborn sessions indoors, but we can certainly do them outdoors as well. We’re happy to discuss your many options with you for the most beautiful and loving newborn portrait!

Timing is everything!

We recommend doing newborn pictures within the first seven days post birth, especially if you want the iconic sleeping baby picture. Babies are still quite sleepy and “pliable” (they’re relatively easy to pose while sleeping at that age) during that first week and it’s the easiest and the best time to capture them so naturally.

We will prep you!

We’ve been doing photography for a long time. We don’t want you to worry about your session, what you need to do or bring with you. We will fully prep you before your newborn session – or any of our sessions – and you will know just what to expect. There are no surprises especially when we’re working with babies and children. We’ll talk you through it and offer you plenty of information ahead of time. Check out our previous blog post, Newborn and Baby Photography Q&A, for some tips!

Bring the kitchen sink!

Ok, not really, but if you are coming to us, remember to bring your well-stocked baby or diaper bag along with extra changes of clothes (maybe an extra top for Mom and Dad as well just in case of accidents). Again, we’ll send you some suggestions ahead of your appointment.

You have options when it comes to Northern Virginia photographers in the Brambleton, VA area, but none will be as committed and as devoted as we are to our craft and, most importantly, to our clients. As small business owners, we have long-established core values we remain committed to to serve you best. Our blog is part of our commitment to our clients to stay in touch and offer advice.

If you have any questions about newborn photography, call us!
 

Baby Photography, Baby Photographer, Northern Virginia Photographers

Ever After Baby Portraits is comprised of Mindy Belcher and Joriana Belcher Anderson, a mother-daughter baby photography team located near Brambleton, VA, in Northern Virginia. We specialize in timeless and emotive fine art family portraits, including newborn and baby portraits. Family means everything and capturing those precious moments to preserve forever will mean family heirlooms for you to share for years to come.

Best,
Mindy & Joriana – Contact Us!

View Our Portfolio | Ever After Baby Portraits

What is your ideal? We know ours! Even before we became known for our professional pregnancy photos, we knew what constituted an ideal maternity client! If truth be told, every photographer has a dream client – whether in their imagination or reality. At Ever After, we’ve been fortunate enough to have ideal clients in and around Brambleton, VA and across Northern Virginia.

So, what defines our ideal client, you ask?

• It’s usually a woman (It is usually the mom or mom-to-be reaching out to us.)
• She is excited about her pregnancy and arrival of her precious baby.
• She is in love with her family – not to mention that baby!
• She is usually at the nucleus of her household and, thanks to her, it is close-knit. She works hard to create a strong sense of family.
• She is searching for a photographer she can trust to create memorable baby photography. She will carefully explore her options for an excellent, caring, and reputable photographer (like we are at Ever After).
• She wants to create lasting memories. She values documenting those memories through photography.
• Finally, once she or her family have posed for their session, she will later carefully select portraits to display and decorate their family home! She’s proud of her family, and she wants to see their portraits each day.

Great pictures come as a result of a good working relationship between the subject and their photographer. Our ideal client values our genuine interest in them. They also appreciate our skills and our ability to create candid, casual poses reflective of their family’s lifestyle and family bonds.

We love creating poignant and artistic professional pregnancy photos you’ll treasure for many years. We’re always interested in meeting new ideal clients and creating extraordinary portraits for them in the Brambleton, VA area!

Baby Photography, Baby Photographer, Professional Pregnancy Photos

Ever After Baby Portraits is comprised of Mindy Belcher and Joriana Belcher Anderson, a mother-daughter baby photography team located in Sterling, VA in Northern Virginia, near Brambleton, VA. We specialize in timeless and emotive fine art family portraits, including newborn and baby portraits. Family means everything and capturing those precious moments to preserve forever will mean family heirlooms for you to share for years to come.

Best,
Mindy & Joriana – Contact Us!

View Our Portfolio | Ever After Baby Portraits

Designing your sweet baby’s nursery can be a very exciting time! Even the best newborn photographers here in Broadlands, VA know not to give you too much advice on this topic – we leave that to the interior design experts and your personal tastes! However, we do know a thing or two about design composition, and we love beautiful spaces. We always urge our clients to include family portraits throughout the nursery – more than likely hanging on the walls where the baby can awaken each morning and fall asleep each night looking at portraits of family. What better thing for your baby to look at every time they’re in their room?!

Compose it!

Decorating any space, let alone a nursery, can be a bit intimidating, or it can get overwhelming. So, pick a starting point. It could be a piece of fabric, a color, a pattern, a decorative item or picture you love and want to include in the nursery. Many parents start with either a color scheme or the crib. Build the nursery around whatever you have chosen for your starting point. Have something you love and want to represent in your baby’s room? Start with that and build around it.

Personalize it!

Make a nursery your child’s unique space by customizing it to your taste. Later, when they are old enough to know and express their feelings, you can make some changes. Meanwhile, use newborn and family portraits including maternity pictures, mementos, letters spelling the baby’s name, and other items to customize your nursery. Studies have shown that when children see pictures of themselves in their family home, it helps them to build self-esteem because they feel loved and valued as something bigger than themselves.

Color it beautiful!

Many parents opt for soft pastel colors which for late night feedings can be soothing and lovely. However, your baby’s vision isn’t fully developed when they’re born. It improves throughout their first year of life. In its earliest months, babies are extremely nearsighted and see contrasts more than anything. Using bold, contrasting colors is one way to help your child’s vision develop – although it is not necessary.

Furniture

Three things should be at the top of your furniture list: A rocking chair or glider for the parents, a crib (of course), and a changing table. After those, if you still have room, a closet or cabinet for storing diapers, clothes, toys, and books is ideal.

We are certain that whatever you do for your baby will be beautiful because you’ve designed and created it with love and your baby in mind! If your nursery design includes your baby’s portraits, using one of the best newborn photographers in the Broadlands, VA area would mean working with us! Contact us. We’d love to do a beautiful series of newborn portraits for your new nursery!
 

Baby Photography, Baby Photographer, Best Newborn Photographers

Ever After Baby Portraits is comprised of Mindy Belcher and Joriana Belcher Anderson, a mother-daughter baby photography team located in Northern Virginia, near Broadlands, VA. We specialize in timeless and emotive fine art family portraits, including newborn and baby portraits. Family means everything and capturing those precious moments to preserve forever will mean family heirlooms for you to share for years to come.

Best,
Mindy & Joriana – Contact Us!

View Our Portfolio | Ever After Baby Portraits

We work hard to be the best newborn photographer from Broadlands, VA to our Sterling, VA backyard and across Northern Virginia! Given our lengthy experience as a professional photographer, our friends often ask how much they should pay for photography. It is an excellent question with an answer that is both simple and complicated.

If you want to spend less, then you may or may not get what you want. (Prepare yourself to be disappointed, just in case!) If you’re paying a bit more, then you should expect better quality portraits. The best photographers are often the ones with the most experience and, as a result, charge more. Just as with other professionals, you usually get what you pay for – whether you hire a family or a newborn photographer in Northern VA.

With any professional photographer, you are paying for their skills, their training, their equipment and technology, and, lastly, you are paying for experience. When you hire Ever After, you are getting all of that in addition to our full commitment to you and your portraits. We are always happy to discuss our pricing because we believe in full transparency. Contact us!

Earlier this year we posted a good article from the Angie’s List blog. It’s worth including the link once again because it provided good tips on how to select a photographer and the role pricing can play. In part the article states: “Expertise is the main factor that dictates the price a professional photographer charges. With more experience, a professional photographer typically charges more.”

On the subject of experience, it is important to point out that everyone has to start somewhere. We were novices at one point. There are two skill sets with professional photography: technical knowledge and practical knowledge. Technical means you know everything (or almost everything) on the technical aspects of photography including equipment. The practical knowledge involves experience in handling clients before, during, and after a portrait session. That only comes with practice and time.

Today, we have those years of experience, technical expertise, and practical knowledge. So to answer the initial question of “How much should you invest in your family portraits?”, it depends largely on your budget and your expectations. You should invest what you can to get what you want.

We are happy to discuss your budget and work within your budget. Please contact us if you’d like to work with the best newborn photographer in the Broadlands, VA and Northern Virginia area. We understand (and appreciate) that our clients are making an investment in telling their stories through our photography.
 

Baby Photography, Baby Photographer, Best Newborn Photographer

Ever After Baby Portraits is comprised of Mindy Belcher and Joriana Belcher Anderson, a mother-daughter baby photography team located in Northern Virginia, near Broadlands, VA. We specialize in timeless and emotive fine art family portraits, including newborn and baby portraits. Family means everything and capturing those precious moments to preserve forever will mean family heirlooms for you to share for years to come.

Best,
Mindy & Joriana – Contact Us!

View Our Portfolio | Ever After Baby Portraits