A baby shower has an unusual photographic problem. It is a party held for someone who is often tired, frequently uncomfortable, and not always keen to be photographed - thrown in celebration of a person who does not exist yet.
The result is a lot of photographs of gifts and cake, and comparatively few of the people in the room. Which is a shame, because the point of the day is the room: the specific group who turned up for someone at a particular moment, most of whom will not all be together again.
These 18 ideas are built around that. They are also designed to be low-effort, because the guest of honour has limited energy and should not have to work for the photographs.
Six ideas centred on the parent-to-be
Seated, always
Set the booth up at a chair rather than a standing position. Standing for photographs is genuinely tiring at seven or eight months, and a seated booth means the guest of honour can stay put while people come to her.
One strip with each guest
Everyone in turn, same chair, same framing. Twenty strips at ninety seconds each. Presented afterwards as a set, this is the single best thing a baby shower booth produces, and it requires her to do almost nothing.
The bump, four ways
Only if she wants to. Hands on it, both parents' hands, a sibling's hands, and one frame of just her face. The last frame is the one that matters - bump photographs frequently forget there is a person attached.
Both parents, unposed
Four frames of the two of them talking rather than facing the camera. There will be plenty of posed photographs; there are rarely any of them simply being together.
The face during the gift opening
Not the gift - her reaction to it. Four frames catches the real one, which typically occurs about half a second before the polite one.
The quiet moment
Near the end, when most people have gone. Tired, surrounded by wrapping paper, sitting down properly for the first time. Consistently the best photograph of the day.
Six ideas for the guests
Advice on a card
Each guest takes a strip holding one piece of written advice. Compiled into a book, this replaces a guest book entirely and produces something considerably more useful - the advice is real, and having a face attached to each piece makes it far more memorable.
Predictions
A card with a guess: date, weight, name, which parent the baby will look like. Read them all back in a year.
A message to the baby
Guests write a short note addressed to a person who will read it in fifteen or twenty years. This is the one that produces genuine effort - people write very differently when the audience is a future teenager.
The generations strip
Grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles. Take it early while everybody is present. At almost every family event somebody leaves before this gets organised.
Guests holding their own baby photo
Ask people in advance to bring a photograph of themselves as a baby. Four frames each holding it up. Unexpectedly moving, and the preparation is a single message sent a week earlier.
The group, all at once
Everyone crammed into one frame. Badly composed, half-cropped, and the one that gets printed.
Three ideas that pay off later
A baby shower is the beginning of a sequence rather than a standalone event, and a few of these ideas are worth setting up specifically so they can be continued.
The same chair, later
Take a strip in a specific chair at the shower. Take another in the same chair with the baby, then at one year, then at five. The chair does the work of making the sequence legible.
Before and after
One strip at the shower, one taken as soon as it is reasonable afterwards, same framing. The pair is more affecting than either photograph alone.
The guest list, annually
A strip of whoever is present at the shower, then a strip of whoever is present at each birthday. Over several years it becomes an honest record of who stayed close.
Three ideas for guests who cannot attend
Baby showers have unusually high non-attendance. People are scattered, travel is difficult, and the date is set by a due date rather than by convenience.
The remote strip
A booth link so someone in another country appears on a strip alongside guests in the room. Two minutes, and it means they were present rather than merely mentioned.
Advice from a distance
Guests who cannot attend take a strip with their advice card wherever they are, and it goes into the same book as everyone else's. Nobody looking at it later will remember who was physically in the room.
The compiled album
A shared album that everyone can add to, opened a week before and left open a week after. It captures the people who arrived late, could not travel, or only found out afterwards.
The reasoning behind remote participation is in why we built the shared booth.
Practical setup
- A seated position, near the middle of the room. Not a corner. The guest of honour should not have to walk to it.
- Daylight if at all possible. Baby showers usually happen in the afternoon, which means good window light is available. Use it - it is far kinder than any indoor lighting and requires nothing.
- Nothing overhead. Ceiling lights are unflattering to everyone and particularly unkind in photographs where people are tired.
- Keep the background plain. Decorated backdrops date very quickly and photograph worse than a blank wall.
- One person responsible. Not the parent-to-be, and not the host, who will be occupied. Somebody with a phone and the link.
The lighting principles generalise and are covered in the photo booth lighting guide.
Things worth avoiding
- Do not make participation compulsory. Some people do not want to be photographed pregnant, and the day should not require them to explain that to a room.
- Skip the novelty props. Dummies, oversized bottles, cartoon speech bubbles. They date badly and they are the reason a lot of shower photographs feel slightly embarrassing five years later.
- Do not photograph the gifts individually. Nobody looks at these. A single strip of the pile is sufficient.
- Avoid printed slogans on props. They are illegible at strip size and they anchor the photograph to a specific year of internet humour.
- Do not leave it until the end. By the last hour people have left and the guest of honour is exhausted. Take the important strips in the first half.
What to do with them afterwards
Baby shower photographs have a specific eventual audience that most event photographs do not: the child. That changes what is worth keeping and how it should be stored.
- Print the advice strips and bind them. A simple book of strips and handwritten advice is something a fifteen-year-old will genuinely read. A shared cloud folder is not.
- Date everything. In twenty years the exact month will matter and nobody will remember it.
- Write down who is who. The child will not recognise half these people, and by the time they ask, some of the answers will be hard to find.
- Give the parent the set of individual guest strips within a week, while it still feels like an event rather than admin.
The printing process is in how to print photo strips at home, and presentation options are in what to do with your photo strips.
The booth itself needs nothing beyond a browser - the LensBooth booth runs on a laptop or tablet propped in front of a chair, which is the entire installation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are good baby shower photo booth ideas?
One strip with each guest in turn, taken from a seated position with identical framing, is the strongest - it produces a complete set with almost no effort from the guest of honour. Advice cards held up in the fourth frame turn the same photographs into a guest book replacement.
What is a good alternative to a baby shower guest book?
Have each guest take a photo strip holding a handwritten card - either advice, a prediction, or a message addressed to the baby to read in fifteen years. Bound into a simple book it is far more likely to be read than a page of signatures, and people write very differently when the audience is a future teenager.
How do you set up a photo booth at a baby shower?
At a chair rather than a standing position, near the middle of the room, ideally in daylight from a window. Standing for photographs is tiring late in pregnancy, so a seated booth lets the guest of honour stay put while people come to her. Turn off any overhead lighting.
How can guests who cannot attend join a baby shower?
A shared booth link lets someone in another country appear on a strip alongside guests in the room. Remote guests can also record advice strips wherever they are - placed in the same book as everyone else's, nobody looking at it later will remember who was physically present.
What should you avoid at a baby shower photo booth?
Novelty props like oversized dummies and cartoon speech bubbles, which date badly; decorated backdrops, which photograph worse than a plain wall; and making participation compulsory, since some people do not want to be photographed pregnant and should not have to explain that to a room.
How can remote family members join a baby shower photo booth?
Send out a private Shared Booth link to out-of-town grandparents or relatives during the shower. They can open the booth on their phone or computer and take a synchronized photo strip with the parent-to-be, creating a keepsake for the baby book that includes family who could not travel.
Sources and further reading
- Available light photography - Working with the light a room already has, which is the situation nearly every booth is in.
- Portrait photography - Established conventions for photographing people, which booth framing borrows from.