×
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

When it is no child's play

Baby photography
Last Updated 09 February 2017, 19:01 IST

In photography, there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than
reality” — these inspiring words by American photographer Alfred Stieglitz perfectly describe the process of capturing different moments of life through the camera.

Such is the craze for this device that photo shoots are one of the biggest sensations of the digital world.
    
After maternity photo shoots took the world of photography by storm, the new buzz word is baby photography.
     
Young parents want to capture every moment of their little one’s growing up years  — from the time they open their eyes to their first smile.

Photographer Divya Shirodkar of ‘KriyetionwithDivya’ says Bengaluru has one of the most lucrative markets for baby photography.
    
“Bengaluru has a culture of adapting to new trends. Every parent wants to capture these memories as they have understood how crucial these moments are in life,” she details.

Divya says there are vendors who make different accessories that parents and photographers can use to add a fun element to a picture.
      
“Most parents like to go for candid photography as babies are adorable naturally. The most important requirement for this is patience. Babies take their own time to do things and so, these shoots will naturally take time. The second thing is that the photographer has to have a love for babies and be open to changes during the process,” she explains.

Divya Lokesh, mother of two-year-old Likhil Kumar, says it is a great pleasure to see a baby’s antics in front of the camera; without him having any knowledge of what is happening.
     
“I do these photo shoots yearly. The best part is that when my little one grows up, he can relive these memories again. I do a lot of research on various themes and attires before a photo shoot,” says Divya Lokesh.

For most parents, it is a way to give something special to their children. Divya plans to continue the photo shoots of her son even after he grows up and says she will gift the entire album to him once he turns eighteen.

So aren’t these photo shoots tiring for the child?
    
“It depends on how well the photographer takes care of the baby. Our photographer is very flexible and if the baby looks tired, she immediately stops the shoot for the day and continues the next day,” says Divya.

Photographer Ashish Bafna of ‘Flintstones Production’, who has been into baby photography from the last three years, says baby photography is something of a luxury here in India.
   
“We want to make people realise that the first moments of your baby, the first of everything that he/she does, will never come back. Which is why preserving them in frames is the best thing to do. We try to make it more interesting by converting these pictures into a storybook where the hero is the baby.

So once they grow up, they can read their own book,” says Ashish.

He says that the most common images that parents want are of various body parts like toes, fingers, hands. These pictures make a timeline of sorts of the gradual growth of their baby.

Choosing to hire a professional photographer is always a good option, says Bhakti Gandhivalia, a mother of a four-year-old baby girl Pratha. She opines that the same emotion and feeling cannot be captured in a phone.
    
However, being an artist, Bhakti creates her own backgrounds and themes which are used by the concerned photographer.
    
“A photographer’s perspective makes a photograph look surreal. We want to record the growth of our baby over the years, so we prefer capturing candid moments. A complete baby photo shoot easily takes three to four hours so the most important thing is to have patience. Unlike earlier times, today baby photography is breaking the mindset of ‘evil eye’ that earlier generations had when it came to children. It is rather an investment of a lifetime,” says Bhakti. 

ADVERTISEMENT
(Published 09 February 2017, 17:04 IST)

Follow us on

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT