Working at Bella Baby How I Quickly Got Better at Directing Photo Shoots

Yesterday I finished up my last day working as a newborn photographer for a company called Bella Baby Photography. As I move on from this position, I find myself looking back and reflecting on the good and bad things that came out of the experience.

When I first started this job, I was very skilled with my camera and had done a few paid photo shoots but was struggling with all of the skills required as a photographer outside of taking the photos. For example, I had a family photo shoot just before I took the job which included around 15 family members. They wanted pictures of many different combinations of people, and it was a slightly hectic situation. Although the shoot went well overall and I was proud of the gallery that resulted from it, I really struggled to hold the attention of the family members and effectively give them directions on what to do. It was a skill I really wanted to develop and improve.

Here is where Bella Baby came in. A typical day at Bella Baby starts with me rolling up to the hospital around 15 minutes before my shift is scheduled to start, in this case, 8:45. I go to the mom/baby unit and set up my laptop in a designated room that I use as a home base. I then take down the info on the hospital census to determine who needs to be photographed that day. Natural deliveries get photographed the day after birth, C-sections two days after. Once I know which rooms are scheduled to be photographed on that day, I call the rooms to see if they are interested in completing the photo session.

This process was a useful one, and also sometimes a frustrating one. One thing about being a Bella Baby photographer is the emphasis put on being a salesman. I had a short script I would say to each room when they called. “Goodmorning, my name is Will and I work with Bella Baby Photography. We are contracted with your hospital to do photo shoots of all of the babies. Congradulations! Today is baby’s first photo shoot!” I wrote this script based on some advice and talking points given in the Bella Baby training. Often times, the parents would say no for one reason or another and I had another set of talking points, again given to me in the training, to address the parents’ concerns. We were expected to get 60% of the rooms to say yes to the photo shoots and were regularly reminded if we were or were not hitting those numbers.

I enjoy talking to people and understand the value of being able to sell your services, but all of the pushy (in my opinion) sales tactics that I was taught to use did not come naturally and were not something I felt good about using. That being said, I did learn some basic tips on selling a service. Never straight up ask someone if they want your services. I am no phycologist, but for some reason, that makes people want to say no. Also, if someone says no, try to start a conversation about why they are declining. They may be declining for a reason that you can easily address. I used to immediately take no at face value, not knowing that I could help people find an agreement that works for them without being pushy or aggressive. I also got better at taking rejection through this process.

Once I have called the rooms and scheduled the photo shoots, then I show up to their rooms to do the photo shoot. The photo shoots were amazing! I loved taking pictures of the babies and seeing the parents so happy. People were generally tired, but in a good mood and a lot of families were super excited to be getting photos. They were perfect subjects to practice new techniques and to get better at directing photo shoots. Some days I would get as many as 6 or 7 photo shoots, giving me tons of repetition to practice my photography.

It started out pretty awkward, with me stumbling my way through shoots, mostly just letting the parents do what they wanted and taking pictures as it was happening. I was being a very passive photographer. As I completed more shoots, I started putting together a routine of different poses that looked good and would naturally flow from one to the next. Once I knew what pose I wanted next, I started becoming more comfortable instructing the parents on what to do. I never had any “a ha” moment where I all of a sudden understood the best way to conduct a photo shoot, and I still learn new things with every shoot that I go on, but over time, with more repetition, my skills began to grow. I grew more confident in my skills as a well-rounded photographer. It taught me a valuable lesson: I can watch as many Youtube videos or listen to as many podcasts as I want, but there is no substitute for actually doing photo shoots. After every photo shoot, I take a moment to think about what went well, what didn’t, what mistakes I made, and what I wanted to do differently in the next shoot.

I also got much better at editing photos in lightroom. I would take usually around 150-200 photos from each photo shoot and end with a gallery of 18-20 (you are required to have that many) edited photos. I learned so many useful tricks sorting and editing large numbers of photos. There are many little shortcuts you can take when dealing with a lot of photos in Lightroom, that I mostly just stumbled across from doing it so many times over and over.

Long story short, repetition is the best way to get better. Crazy right!? So get out there and just take pictures. Get someone willing to be your subject and direct them on what to do. Walk them through what you are doing, it makes you seem like more of a professional and it makes them feel more comfortable. Making your subjects feel comfortable and like they trust you is one of the most important things for a successful photo shoot.

That access to tons of photo shoots is valuable and is the major upside of working for Bella Baby. There are, however, some major down sides as well that you should know about if you are considering working there.

First is the big elephant in the room, how you get paid. Bella Baby pays a flat 30% commission to their photographers for anything that is sold. I didn’t think this was too bad when I signed on and I know there were some photographers who were making decent money to be fair. I am not a natural salesman and do not like utilizing tactics I find pushy and believe that may be what is required to make good money on the commission model (just speculation). This combined with the fact that I use my own camera, my computer, my version of lightroom, I provide my own work uniform, and am required to store all of the photos on my computer’s hard drive for a certain amount of time which can be hundreds of gigabytes makes the pay structure feel… bad.

This leads me into the last part of the process, the sale. The photo shoot itself is completely free, meaning if you don’t sell anything after you’ve done the shoot and edited the photos (i.e. all of the work) you make nothing. This can make the sale very stressful and is another way you are incentivized to focus more on the salesman aspect of the job. On all of my freelance jobs, I am paid for my time and services, but that was often not the case at Bella Baby. I had entire days working there where I would work 6 or 7 hours and make nothing. This can be very demoralizing. Photography is a creative enterprise and is not always about the money, but a man’s gotta eat.

The fact that I provide all of the equipment, I do all of the work, and I do all of the selling, but make very little money, is the reason I am moving on from this position. I’m sure this job can be a good fit for some people, but it is not for me. I feel that the business model of Bella Baby is based around taking advantage of beginner photographers who are looking for paid work. I have reached a point where, spending those extra 3 days per week trying to drum up new business for my freelance work is a more valuable use of my time.

Hope this was helpful