Workshop Review – Memories Mentoring Newborn Workshop {UK based}

This weekend, I finally attended the long awaited Memories Mentoring newborn workshop. The ladies travel all over, but this particular venue was Stevenage, not too far from London.

Newborn photography has exploded in extremely recent years. In only the past 2-3 years, it’s been gaining in popularity in the UK and with it comes a few different things:

1. Lots of photographers wanting training in newborn photography and…
2. Unfortunately, too many photographers trying to get these mystical shots dangerously.

Enter Memories Mentoring. Memories Mentoring it a group of three fantastic UK newborn photographers. They are:

• Elli Cassidy of Mini Memories Photography
• Maddy Roders of Maddyzangles Photography
• Shellie Wall of Shellie Wall Photography

These women came together for one common purpose:

to train photographers in the art of newborn photography and show them how to do it safely

Two of those three women are actually local competition to one another. But I’m so impressed with the way they have come together and shared and they both run busy, solid newborn photography businesses. Which goes to show that your competition isn’t nearly as dangerous as you may think.

{The Workshop}

The workshop I attended had 10 students from allover the world. One photographer came from Poland, another from Sweden and yet another from Italy. This surprised me and hilighted the huge need there is in Europe and the fact that this is one of the only workshops around! Yeehaw!

We started the morning with coffee and an introduction from the ladies. We looked at two different set-ups: a beanbag set up and a faux wooden floor/wall set up. Ethan, our little model showed up and the ladies took us through different poses, soothing techniques and shooting techniques all while we got to shoot our own photos of the model. Actually watching them in action, I had so many lightbulb moments about the things I’d been doing wrong. Mainly, the way their poses were a natural, methodical flow from one to the next so as not to disturb sleeping baby.

One thing I found extremely helpful was the fact that Maddy had training in sleep patterns in her job before becoming a photographer so she’s been able to apply these to her photography and talked us through some really amazing things to do with our model’s sleep. For example, REM is the lightest sleep stage so if your baby is twitching, leave him alone or you will run the risk of waking him up for good!

Gosh…I learned SO MUCH at this workshop. The workshop was a posing workshop. Not a lighting workshop or a camera settings workshop. There were all different levels of photographers there, but this is about the babies, not you as a photographer.

The food was great. The techniques were completely doable. The teachers knew their stuff. And it was in the UK! No need to travel to America to get this education. I highly recommend it.

{stuff you want to know}

• You can view the details of the workshop days here
• The cost is £395
• The next available workshop date is 23rd March in London
• Memories Mentoring is also available for one-on-one tuition which I know at least one of my readers has taken advantage of and she was very impressed.

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