Fresh 48: Is this the latest baby trend to hit the UK?
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You may not have heard of a Fresh 48 yet but it’s a growing trend in baby photography in the UK. Adopted from the US – as with the baby shower and the gender reveal party before it – a Fresh 48 offers parents the opportunity to record the first few hours and days of their newborn’s life ‘earthside’.
Fresh 48 sessions have been around for a while in the US but are just starting to gain popularity here in the UK. Unlike most newborn photography sessions, the Fresh 48 takes place within the first 48 hours after birth to capture those first
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few precious days and hours. They offer an alternative for those who don’t fancy the full birth photography experience which can be a very intimate moment to allow a photographer to participate in.
Tiny curled up toes: Fresh 48 newborn photography captures the tiny details soon forgotten
They also tap into another growing trend for photography that captures the real and the raw rather than the scripted and curated views flooding today’s Instagram accounts. It’s
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certainly a growing trend in family photography to move away from the old-fashioned traditional studio portraits in everyone’s Sunday best to a more natural, unposed and relaxed tone. As a London documentary family photographer I have noticed that this desire the capture the real and the natural is moving into newborn photography also with a growing market to mark and capture a baby’s milestones as they really are, instead of or as well as the stylised baby portraits – cute though they are – documenting the moments and details that will soon be
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forgotten in a fog of sleepless nights. Entirely documentary in style, Fresh 48 photography sessions focus on simply recording those early hours and days in a newborn’s life as an observer. Unposed and natural, the reportage approach captures those special moments that so often go by in a blur in the early days of sleep deprivation and adjusting to the new arrival (whether it be your first time or you’re an old hand at motherhood with a full brood awaiting their new sibling!). All those gorgeous little reflexes like curled up teeny tiny toes and
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stretched out little limbs, the cord tie and the scrunched up little face, the downy skin and the unfocused big baby eyes!
Small boy: Big Noise! London Fresh 48 newborn photography captures the real and the raw
A Fresh 48 session can take place in hospital or a birthing centre if that’s where baby is delivered and you don’t get home straight away, at home following a home birth or to welcome baby home after mother na baby have been discharged. The first day back
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at home after giving birth can be a bit of a whirlwind with midwife visits, nappy changes and back-to-back feeding but the beauty of documentary family photography and a Fresh 48 session is that those real and raw moments are are precisely where the beauty lies and the whole point behind the Fresh 48 ethos. And its because those moments can so often go by in a blur of appointments and trying to catch a few winks, that more and more families are finding it important to capture them for posterity and treasure.
You may not have heard of a Fresh 48 yet but it’s a growing trend in baby photography in the UK. Adopted from the US – as with the baby shower and the gender reveal party before it – a Fresh 48 offers parents the opportunity to record the first few hours and days of their newborn’s life ‘earthside’.
Fresh 48 sessions have been around for a while in the US but are just starting to gain popularity here in the UK. Unlike most newborn photography sessions, the Fresh 48 takes place within the first 48 hours after birth to capture those first few precious days and hours. They offer an alternative for those who don’t fancy the full birth photography experience which can be a very intimate moment to allow a photographer to participate in.
Tiny curled up toes: Fresh 48 newborn photography captures the tiny details soon forgotten
They also tap into another growing trend for photography that captures the real and the raw rather than the scripted and curated views flooding today’s Instagram accounts. It’s certainly a growing trend in family photography to move away from the old-fashioned traditional studio portraits in everyone’s Sunday best to a more natural, unposed and relaxed tone. As a London documentary family photographer I have noticed that this desire the capture the real and the natural is moving into newborn photography also with a growing market to mark and capture a baby’s milestones as they really are, instead of or as well as the stylised baby portraits – cute though they are – documenting the moments and details that will soon be forgotten in a fog of sleepless nights. Entirely documentary in style, Fresh 48 photography sessions focus on simply recording those early hours and days in a newborn’s life as an observer. Unposed and natural, the reportage approach captures those special moments that so often go by in a blur in the early days of sleep deprivation and adjusting to the new arrival (whether it be your first time or you’re an old hand at motherhood with a full brood awaiting their new sibling!). All those gorgeous little reflexes like curled up teeny tiny toes and stretched out little limbs, the cord tie and the scrunched up little face, the downy skin and the unfocused big baby eyes!
Small boy: Big Noise! London Fresh 48 newborn photography captures the real and the raw
A Fresh 48 session can take place in hospital or a birthing centre if that’s where baby is delivered and you don’t get home straight away, at home following a home birth or to welcome baby home after mother na baby have been discharged. The first day back at home after giving birth can be a bit of a whirlwind with midwife visits, nappy changes and back-to-back feeding but the beauty of documentary family photography and a Fresh 48 session is that those real and raw moments are are precisely where the beauty lies and the whole point behind the Fresh 48 ethos. And its because those moments can so often go by in a blur of appointments and trying to catch a few winks, that more and more families are finding it important to capture them for posterity and treasure.
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Published and award-winning documentary family photographer based in London. Documenting the everyday in family life as beautiful works of art and celebrating the beauty in the ordinary.
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