The Making of a 1 Year Milestone Session | West Des Moines Iowa

I've photographed sweet Kylee since she was a newborn. It amazes me, even with my career I see it every day, how quickly these little cuddle bugs grow up into walking, talking personalities.

The making of a 1 year portrait session first starts with the parent identifying favorite colors or a theme that we can create an inspired look of for baby's birthday smash cake set.

In this case, Kylee's mama found this amazing little dress on Etsy. From time to time, if a custom designed outfit will not be needed by the client and it is an outfit that may fit into BGP's collection we will buy it back from you after the session  at 50% of what you paid for it.

This dress is too perfect to not be in our collection! 

Kylee's dress became the styling point for her cake smash set. We had a banner already in our collection with similar colors, and our bakery designed the cake. 

All cakes are ordered by us for the session and we pick it up to make sure it is perfect and ready for the session. Our cakes are baked by the talented team at Cache Bake Shoppe

They make such delicious soft cakes with the perfect sweetness of icing that babies can't help themselves but love it. For this cake we continued with the pink, teal, and gold colors. On top we had a cookie '1' placed on a blunt stick. If nothing else, babies almost always love the cookie to chew on or bang with! 

A one year session begins with 2 non-birthday related set-ups before we finish with the cake smash. 

While BGP does style all sessions with outfits and accessories from our collection - we are completely open to outside outfits that fit well into our style of portraiture. No outfits with wording, logos, or trademarked/licensed images/wording. 

We like to avoid neons or bright colors, as well as busy patterns. With the exception of cake smash sets {where bright and busy is fun} - we try to keep our tones neutral so that baby is the star.

A one year session includes 20 fully edited images capturing baby's personality as well as the evolution of their cake smashing. 

Purple is one of Kylee's mama's favorite colors for her. So of course we did it big with a little Fine Art image. As you can see Kylee is a pretty easy-going happy babe. I received this purple stool and chandelier from the talented and LOCAL {out of Ankeny} Kings Cloth 

With most 1 year olds, by the time we complete two non-birthday sets and then the cake smash they are exhausted. It might only be 45-60 minutes but the stimulation of the new environment and of course the eating of a delicious cake brings them to their limit. 

In the case of Kylee, I could tell she was pretty happy and easy-going enough that we could work in one more set before her smashing. This is her ... Baby Gap attitude image ;-)

It is usually best if parents NOT wear their best to a 1 year session. Generally at 1 - they might be crawling or running off set a lot - which means a lot of chasing for you. At the point of smashing cake - there is a good chance you and I might get some icing on us! 

Our studio can design collages from your portrait session. I often will design one and post on Facebook to show off a series of images from the gallery. Feel free to ask me about custom designs and rates. 

For more information about Brandy Goldenberg Photography please visit our website or facebook page. If you have questions about availability or investment send us a message.