First birthday photographs, in three acts: clean, cake, chaos.
Cake smash sessions start from the current session rate and are built around the first birthday, ideally within a fortnight either side of the day itself. There is one practical requirement: your baby needs to sit up steadily on their own, which usually happens somewhere between nine and eleven months. If they are not quite there, it is worth waiting a few weeks. A wobbly sitter spends the whole session being held upright, and that is not the picture anyone came for.
I'm Tom Carter, based in Leyland and covering the whole county. Everything is included: the session, the setup and a gallery of fully edited images with nothing charged per photograph.
We start clean. Ten or fifteen minutes of proper portraits while your baby is fresh, alert and still wearing an outfit nobody has ruined yet. These are usually the frames that end up on the wall, so it matters that they come first rather than last.
Then the cake goes down. Some babies attack it instantly; plenty sit and stare at it, appalled, for several minutes before a parent has to demonstrate. Both versions photograph well and the hesitation is often funnier than the destruction. Twenty to thirty minutes of that is plenty.
Then we clean up, and that is often the best part. A splash tub or a bubble bath at the end gives you a completely different set of pictures, and it means your baby leaves clean rather than being carried to the car in a towel.
Everything happens on a sheet, so the mess stays in one square of floor rather than across your kitchen.
Book the slot shortly after a nap and well before the next one. Mid-morning suits most one-year-olds, and it is when window light is most useful. Season barely matters indoors, but a bright overcast day is the best light of the lot.
Your gallery arrives well inside the six weeks I promise for weddings, delivered online to view and download, with 15% off prints and albums. A cake smash is a natural sequel to a newborn session twelve months earlier, and plenty of families turn it into a wider family session on the same visit. There are maternity and couples shoots too. More about me if you want to know who is arriving with the cake, or get in touch.
As close to the first birthday as you can manage, and ideally within a fortnight either side. The other thing that matters is sitting: your baby needs to sit steadily without support, which most manage somewhere between nine and eleven months. If yours is not there yet, wait a few weeks rather than propping them up.
Cake smash sessions are priced on enquiry . which includes the session and a gallery of fully edited images with no per-photo charges.
A small, plain sponge with buttercream. Buttercream squashes, smears and flies; fondant icing sets hard and simply defeats a one-year-old. Keep it to a single layer roughly the size of your hand, because it is a prop rather than pudding, and tell me about any allergies well beforehand so we can plan around them.
Less than you fear, more than you would allow at home. Some babies demolish a cake in ninety seconds, others inspect it suspiciously for five minutes and then refuse to touch it. Both make good photographs. I lay everything on a sheet, so the mess is contained to one square of floor.
About an hour in total, but only twenty to thirty minutes of that is cake. We start clean with proper portraits while your baby is fresh, then bring the cake in, and finish with a clean-up. Any longer and you are photographing a tired, sticky, cross child.
Two outfits, a big towel, wipes, a change of nappy and a spare top for whoever is lifting. A bubble bath or splash tub at the end is optional but photographs brilliantly. Everything else I sort.