Please enjoy my little booklet on what to expect for your newborn session :)

I've had the pleasure of learning a lot of my craft with Creative Live. My specialty is newborn, maternity and family portrait photography which has been perfected by these amazing classes and bootcamps on Creative Live.

At the moment I'm enjoying a class from Sue Bryce and Kelly Brown, Bumps to Babies which covers some great posing techniques and tips for getting the image just right, using correct angles and lighting, techniques of posing baby with parents, maternity posing, and each monthly stage of baby over 12 months which is a fantastic idea to market with your business.

But not only do you learn the technical side, there is some great ideas for marketing  which is so important to our businesses, the ideas will keep you busy for a long time but the real bonus is the amount of tools that come with this class, Photoshop templates, marketing cards, posing guides, birth announcements, session reminders to name a few.

This course covers a lot of aspects of your business, for example; branding, how important your name and branding is to your business, this is the first thing your clients will see to  get to know you and your work.

How is your website performing? What are you specialising in? Pricing, marketing, blogging, social media...... I know I'm going to watch this class many times to let all the information sink in and keep me inspired. Learning from such successful business creatives has to be a "win win" for my business.

Creative Live is not only for photographers, the subjects and tutors are so varied. Anything you can do creatively you can find further knowledge from this site.
Something for everyone.
Channels are;

• photo & video
• art & design
• music & audio
• craft & maker
• money & life

Check it out for free with their free live classes which change every day,

I just adore photographing the blossoming beauty of an expectant mother, although uncomfortable, she is glowing, she has an aura about her, she should be so in love with her body right now, it holds a child, a living, moving child that will need and want her love and nurturing for the rest of its life.
In just a few weeks this child will be born, and will become a huge part of her life, extending her family, this child will be a son or daughter, a grandchild, a cousin, a nephew or niece, a great grand child, adding to the generations before them, a new story is beginning.
Who and what this child will become has a lot to do with the history before they arrived, the lessons taught by parents and grandparents to be passed on to this new child, add to this the amazing inventions that are to come in this child's lifetime.

It just astounds me.

And you dear mother are a goddess!

Cake smashes are just so much fun!
But I have found that probably 75% of the cake smashers aren't really keen on the cakes being offered.
These new 1 year old toddlers are just not used to too much sweetness.

Now you can spend around $70 on a specially made cake (that I see often the little ones don't like much) or you can spend just a bit of time to make a cake that they will love to eat and smoosh around. Little ones lose interest very quickly if the cake is too hard, it needs to be soft and collapse really easily
The cake in the above picture was just a chocolate sponge from the supermarket and iced at home, totally perfect as it fell apart and went everywhere, he loved the texture and the taste. (It actually cleaned up well too as it wasn't all gooey).

There are plenty of healthy options, sugarless and with fruit juice or bananas and yoghurt or cream cheese icings.
For a healthy options and ideas I've come across a few good recipes:

1. Healthy Sugar-Free Banana & Apple Smash Cake
2. Healthy First Birthday Cake
3. Banana Baby Birthday Smash Cake
4. Baby’s First Birthday Cake -“Healthy Smash Cake

Man I love doing maternity sessions, 'Mama to be' looks absolutely glowing and is so ready to be meeting her beautiful little bundle.
Hair, skin and eyes are at their healthiest and 'Mamas to be' all have a look of pure contentment and are ready to nurture.
I love being able to capture that look, that moment in time that all her children in the years to come will look at and know how much their arrival meant to her.

Click the following link for the full story.
 Smile Baby Wordpress blog

Just thought you might like to see a few photos from Lann's cake smash, he loved smashing up his cake... and loved it even more when he realised the cake actually tasted great too. Absolutely priceless!

The cake smash has been booked, and now I need to know how the parents picture it in their minds, colours, favourite themes etc. For this one I was asked to make it for a boy and with a bit of a Maori theme. 
So, I thought, ok, shades of blue which made me think of paua shell, hmm I need to find some paua patterned material, (sometimes in Gisborne it's hard to get some items), but I managed to find some at Bernina 'yay!'.
I then chopped it up into flags, folded tops over and hot glued, threaded nto string and  'voila' a paua shell bunting :).
I hope you enjoy the following photos as much as this wee chap loved his time in the studio.