LGBTQ baby shower photographer London

Someone sent me their camera roll from a baby shower in a room above a pub in Peckham. Four hundred photos, taken by maybe twenty guests across one afternoon. One of the two mums appeared in six of them.

She hadn’t been hiding. Most of the afternoon she was making tea and steering her mother-in-law away from the cake.

What she wasn’t doing was carrying, and every phone in that room pointed at the bump. Booking an LGBTQ baby shower photographer in London mostly comes down to this: somebody has to photograph the other parent.

The one nobody thinks to point a camera at

Guests aren’t being unkind. A bump is the obvious subject, so the one carrying ends up with three hundred pictures while their partner gets the back of their head in four.

By the time the baby arrives there’s a whole afternoon on record with one parent barely in it. Nobody notices until months later, usually halfway through making an album, and by then you can’t go back and fix it. The first person who pointed this out to me was crying over a photo book at the time, which is a memorable way to learn something.

What I do differently is boringly simple. I decide before I arrive which person is going to get missed, and I follow them for the first hour.

What happens at an LGBTQ baby shower in London

Most of the ones I shoot are mixed. The women only format doesn’t map onto a lot of queer families, so you get partners, mates, brothers and the odd colleague all in the same room, which honestly makes for better photographs than a room of one demographic.

The other difference is who else is standing there. A surrogate, maybe, or the birth mother in an adoption that’s still going through. Those relationships carry their own etiquette and it’s worth two minutes on the phone beforehand to work out who’s happy to appear in something that might get posted.

Ask me to leave someone out and I’ll leave them out. That’s a normal request and it doesn’t need explaining.

The first ninety minutes are the shoot

A shower usually runs three or four hours. The photographs almost all come from the first ninety minutes, while people are still arriving and hugging in doorways before anyone admits they’ve clocked the buffet.

After that the room fills, the light goes flat because someone’s switched every lamp on, and everyone settles into chairs. Booking a photographer for the full four hours is generally money you didn’t need to spend. Two hours, starting fifteen minutes before your first guest, covers it.

The exception is if you’re doing a gender reveal or a big gift opening late in the afternoon. Say so when you book, because that changes the shape of the day and I’d rather plan for it than get caught behind a sofa.

Adoption celebrations book differently

Adoption doesn’t hand you nine months of notice. A match comes through and the party happens in ten days, which is the part nobody warns you about until you’re standing in it.

I’ve had two of these come in with under a fortnight’s warning and both times the couple apologised for the short notice, which they didn’t need to do. Photographers keep more availability at a week out than you’d think, especially midweek. Ring anyway.

The same goes for a sprinkle for a second child, which people tend to organise on a Tuesday for the following Sunday because the first one used up all the ceremony.

Where these happen around London

Hired rooms above pubs do most of the work, and the good ones in Hackney and Peckham have windows on two sides, which matters more than the decor. Community halls are cheaper and usually worse for light, so if you’ve booked one, run the shower in the afternoon rather than the evening.

Flats are my favourite. A living room at capacity photographs as warmth, and the kitchen doorway is where the actual conversations happen. Photographers on the roster live across east and south London and most will travel across town for an afternoon booking, so have a look at who covers events and where they’re based.

The gift table and the wall of phones

Gift opening is where the faces are, and it’s also the moment fifteen people lift a phone at once. Shooting it from standing height gets you a photograph of the backs of handsets.

So I crouch. Undignified, and the only way to get a clean sightline to whoever’s unwrapping the tiny cardigan. If you want the good version of that photo, leave the two of you a seat together rather than putting one on a chair and one on the arm.

What it costs

Shoots through queer.photo usually start around £500, and a two hour shower sits at the lower end because it’s short and it’s local. Every photographer sets their own rate and shows it on their profile, so you can compare numbers before writing to anybody.

Short notice doesn’t automatically mean a premium, so ask rather than assume. Plenty of us would sooner fill a quiet Sunday than hold out for a wedding enquiry that may never land.

Who to book

Look for somebody whose event work has grown adults in it. Balloons and tiny shoes are easy to photograph. A room full of people behaving well around two of their friends is the hard part, and that wants an event photographer rather than a newborn specialist.

Ask one question when you enquire: how do you make sure both parents are in the pictures? Anyone who’s photographed queer families will have an answer ready. Have a proper read of the roster, and if a maternity session is also on your list, the same reasoning shows up in shooting a pregnancy where only one of you is carrying.

Common questions

How much does an LGBTQ baby shower photographer in London cost?

Sessions start at around £500 and a two hour shower normally sits near the bottom of that range. Every photographer on queer.photo publishes their own rate on their profile, so you’ll see the number before you send an enquiry.

How long do you need to be there?

Two hours, starting a quarter of an hour before your first guest. The pictures worth having come from arrivals and the first stretch of the party, so a four hour booking rarely earns its cost.

We’re two dads with a surrogate. How do you handle that?

With a phone call first. We agree who’s happy to appear in photographs and who would rather stay out of anything you might post, and I stick to it.

Can you photograph an adoption celebration at short notice?

Often, yes. Ten days is enough time to find someone, particularly midweek, and short notice doesn’t automatically carry a surcharge.

Will you photograph the games?

If you’re having them. Plenty of queer showers skip the games entirely and run as a normal party with better cake, which suits me because the photographs come out looking like a real afternoon.

Do guests need to know a photographer is coming?

Tell them in the group chat beforehand. It takes thirty seconds and it means nobody feels caught out, which shows in how relaxed the room looks in the first half hour.

Ready when you are. see event options, or find a photographer.