We're often asked how we get babies to pose in certain ways, or how we got particular shots.
Here's a little BTS (behind the scenes) peek at the process from beginning to finished result. We'll discuss these three shots.

We call this a "Nature Blend". Since our studio is in sunny Southern California, there is ample opportunity to shoot beautiful outdoor scenes with our props that can be used as a merge later in Photoshop. For this particular blend, I had a vision in mind since we were doing a favorite client's maternity session in this Garden of Eden-like setting. We brought a blanket that we planned to use during the newborn session (about two months later). We found this large tree stump surrounded by all of this lush foilage. We draped our blanket over it and snapped a few shots. 

When babe came into the studio for her session, we put the same blanket on a small trunk, positioned baby there and draped the same pretty scarf over her. (Colors are off due to lighting temperature being different). Speaking of lighting, when doing this it's important to take note of the direction light is coming from, and how shadows are cast, so that a similar setup can be replicated in studio. And yes the backdrop looks disheveled, but we didn't care since we knew it wouldn't appear in our merged photo.

Then we pulled both images into Photoshop, layered the old one on top of the new one, and erased to reveal the baby in the nature scene.
Whalluh! Photoshop editing magic!!

And here's another version with more of the gorgeous backdrop. Love!

This next one was done basically the same way. Prop was shot among the ivy. 

Babe in studio is positioned with assistant carefully holding from behind in order to get clean shot of head/ears.
And then again for clean shot of back end.

Then we wave the Photoshop Magic wand again and chango presto....Bundle Nature Blend!

We've all seen the chin in hands pose. This one is a bit different since babe has only one hand under chin. Same principle.
Assistant safely holds baby's head up so that we get a clean shot of top of head, then again so we get a clean shot of forearm.
Mergo-presto...and we love the result.