With everything that's going on around the world regarding viruses and illness, I wanted to talk about how this could affect an upcoming photography session. Let's break this down and examine the pros and cons of keeping , canceling, or rescheduling your portrait session.
First and foremost, let's discuss rescheduling and canceling in regards to photographers and their businesses. Photographers base their entire business around session appointments. Everything. We carefully plan, prepare for, and execute everything based on our appointment dates and times. For instance, newborn photos are VERY time-sensitive. They are predominantly booked within the first 2 weeks of a newborn's life and are scheduled based on baby's routine. This means that a newborn session is scheduled based on the day baby was born and usually planned for a morning slot. As most of you know, no matter how much you plan, babies do their own thing. I can set aside a date and time for an upcoming newborn session and baby can say, "Yeah, no, that's not going to work for me. Look out, world! Here I come!". And, BOOM, my whole calendar is thrown off in an attempt to get this newborn's session date and time moved up for baby to be at the preferred age for portraits. If you've ever planned anything important, which I consider ALL of my sessions to be, you put in effort. Time. Money. Consideration. All of these can be completely thrown off when a newborn arrives early or later than planned. Don't get me wrong, I am fully cognizant this is part of being a newborn photographer. That's the way things go. However, as a photographer that wants to provide the absolute best experience, when things change, I'm scrambling to figure out the best option for everyone. In every instance, things have turned out fine. This is one instance where it's important to keep your scheduling appointments at all costs. Photographers, specifically for newborns, have to stay flexible for their smallest clients.
Now, this brings me to the crux of the matter. Illness before your session. I liken it to the same careful consideration you'd use if you were to visit a hospital. If you believe that you, your child, or any member of your family attending the session might be ill, I would caution you to reschedule. There are multiple reasons for this. The biggest being, newborn photographers are constantly around fragile little humans that can be very susceptible to any type of illness. For this reason alone, I would hesitate to bring in someone feeling unwell. It's unfair to those newborns.
However, what if it's your newborn that isn't feeling great? Then you have the added stress of potentially missing out on your newborn portraits. This, THIS, I get. Obviously. That would suck. For both of us. I look forward to capturing your little one. You look forward to having adorable images of your little one. It's a tough situation. BUT, if your newborn has anything that could be communicable, that's putting the other newborns that are possibly exposed, at risk.
There is something I definitely want add to this, though. Before automatically canceling or rescheduling, find out if your child is actually sick. Sometimes, we can become overwhelmed as parents and worried over EVERYTHING that we talk ourselves into believing our little one is sick when in all actuality, they're experiencing normal, newborn/baby growing pains. As an experience newborn photographer and mother, feel free to discuss with me any concerns you might have and we can work through it together.
