Babyhood is different from the newborn days.
It is no longer only about arrival. It is about emergence.
A baby begins to look back, reach forward, laugh, cling, study and reveal something unmistakably their own.
Some babies are quiet and watchful. Others are full of movement and delight.
I photograph what is already there.
A personality beginning to show.
I have photographed babies in my Johannesburg studio since 2005.
The way I work is simple.
Careful light.
Very little around them.
Nothing competing for attention.
There are no themed sets or elaborate props.
Instead, I watch for expression, movement, gesture and the small things parents already recognise in their baby.
A serious stare.
A sudden grin.
A hand reaching out.
The concentration involved in doing something they have only just learnt to do.
Babyhood has its own language.
Some portraits are of your baby alone.
Others include a parent, brother or sister, or the family together.
Being held also gives us something a portrait of a baby alone cannot: scale.
The smallness of a hand against yours.
The way they settle against your chest.
The look exchanged between a baby and someone they know completely.
The baby remains at the centre, but sometimes the relationship is the photograph.
They are becoming themselves while still belonging so completely to you.
Babyhood sits between two very different stages.
The newborn days are behind you.
Childhood is beginning to appear ahead.
What happens between them can seem ordinary while you are living through it.
And then it is gone.
Time is what gives a portrait its value. We simply don't know it yet.
Pregnancy, before everything changes.
Portraits from those first days of new life.
Childhood, as it is now.
The years between childhood and adulthood.
Together, as they are now.
Portraits of mothers and daughters, at every age.
Portraits of mothers and sons, from childhood into adulthood.
Fathers with their children, at every age.
The years between, held together.
JOHANNESBURG PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER
One Moment. One Portrait. Forever
© 2005–2026 Bridget Corke Photography
Blairgowrie · Johannesburg · South Africa
International Master's in Portrait Photography
One of only two in Africa.