A Twins Newborn Session: Double the Cuteness

A Twins Newborn Session: Double the Cuteness

I have photographed a handful of twins newborn sessions, and they each confirm the same thing: photographing twins is not twice the work of photographing a single newborn; it is approximately five times the work, and completely worth every second of it.

Rachel and Ben's twins — Harriet and George — arrived at 38 weeks, healthy and inseparable. They had already, at nine days old, developed a habit of seeking each other out: if placed side by side, they would gradually migrate together until they were touching. This is the image from their session that their parents have framed.

The Practical Reality

Twins newborn sessions require a minimum of three hours, ideally four — not because the photography takes longer, but because the logistics of feeding, settling, and timing two independent small human beings simultaneously take significantly longer. There will always be a moment when one baby is perfectly asleep and exactly photographable and the other is emphatically not.

The approach is patience. You work with the one who is cooperative. You capture the individual portraits first — each twin separately, with each parent separately — and then work toward the together images when both are settled.

The Together Images

The images that most families of twins treasure above all are the ones of the two babies together: curled against each other, sleeping in the same position, or — the hardest to achieve but most rewarding — both awake simultaneously, looking in the same direction. Harriet and George gave me twenty minutes of this. We got three usable images from those twenty minutes. All three are hung in their parents' living room.

The First Year Ahead

Rachel asked me at the end of the session: "Does it get easier?" I told her the honest answer, which is that it gets different. At six months, when they can sit up and interact with each other, twins sessions become riotous and joyful and very different. I see many families back for the six-month and first-year milestones.