Barlow | RUSTON LA NEWBORN DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHER

Barlow, like seriously the coolest name around. His mom and dad had his name picked out when his big brother Branch was born. They had watched a show that had a father and a son whose names were Branch and Barlow. They had said they loved both the names and decided to name their first boy Branch and agreed if they had another boy that they would name him Barlow because they really loved both the names. I really love to hear where names come from, especially different names. I have a similar story about my daughter’s name as she was named after a character on a TV show. Me and my hubby got into a sitcom called “Up All Night”. It starred Christina Applegate and Will Arnett as new parents and their journey through being new parents. We really enjoyed the show but it seems many of those shows don’t last for long till they are canceled. Same was the fate of “Up All Night”. But one thing that stuck from the show was the name “Reagan” which was Christina Applegate’s character’s name. I even looked up her character’s spelling because I knew Ronald Reagan’s name was spelled R-E-A-G-A-N but I wondered it that was only last name spellings. I’ve always been one to like different but normal sounding names. Is that an oxymoron or do you get my drift? It wasn’t till Reagan’s toddler years when I heard “Reagan” every time I turned around. It drives me crazy because it wasn’t a popular name when I was growing up so I thought it would be a the same now but that’s the nature of names, they can become popular at any time and there you are with 5 Ashley girls in your class. If you were born in the 80s, you may have had an Ashley in your class too. But Reagan totally fits her name and I’m glad that’s her name, I couldn’t imagine her as anyone else.

Barlow’s big brother Branch is somebody super special though. I have always been drawn to the documentary style photographs. It wasn’t until 2017 when I started what is called a “Project 365” with my daughter. It’s a simple project that focuses on captures a photo a day, it’s a sense like a photographic journal. Many photographers do it to refine their skills and push themselves to pick their cameras up and fine tune composition skills, knowing their cameras better through practice, and an array of other reasons people start one. I took it as all those things above but took it as a way to capture my daughter’s life. It was rewarding to see all the photos from the year and I cherish them so much, it was then I realized how much I wanted to capture those real moments for others as well. So I decided to take that documentary concept to my baby pkg, but since this was something I had never done before I wanted to give that pkg away for a chance to have a guinea pig. If you’ve followed my work for the last few years you probably noticed my giveaway and my entries using the game “egg roulette”. I had originally asked for entries for this package with just a form for those who wanted in to fill it out, but there was a big missing factor with those forms. I couldn’t tell anything about the families from written words. I really needed an easy going, fun loving family who I knew I could get real emotion and moments from not people who needed direction and wanted to pose. I wanted real, raw moments that I could capture so you could feel like you were stepping into a real memory. So I decided on a fun game. The things that happened during that time, some people bowed out and didn’t even attempt the game. No offense, but this helped to weed out some of those entries because I needed to see they were up for some fun because again this particular package was going to be personal and I needed to see that fun loving personality on display. The other thing I noticed were the men and their reactions. I’m not sure if you know but men are the ones we have to convince to take pictures. They HATE pictures, at least the majority of them do. So for them to participate in a game that is being recorded is a HUGE step but also to see how they interact with their wife and family while doing it told me lots on how they would be for these pictures. Cause remember these pictures were gonna be moments and that meant I needed the whole family involved. It gave me great joy and laughter to watch each entry and to be honest it was really hard to pick. In the end it was between two families, with Marsha’s entry being one of those. I remember discussing it with a photographer friend of mine and she said “You know who you have to pick right?” and without knowing who she was talking about either I had to ask her to explain and she too picked Marsha’s entry. Honestly it was Atom, Marsha’s husband who won it for them. Because it was how much of a good sport he was, he not only played along but he joked with her throughout the entire time, and he lost terribly. They also had such good chemistry together, you could see they were not just spouses but friends. And they really were the perfect pick and come to find out Marsha’s vision for her pictures were exactly the type of photos I wanted to capture. It was like me and her were meant to be a client/photographer pair.

After Branch’s pictures were finished and my work for that package was done, it was crazy bittersweet. I mean I watched little Branch grow up in that year and really got to be in on the moments. So when Marsha had asked about pricing for her second baby’s pictures and asked for the exact same style for Barlow, I was ecstatic to do it all over again! You can bet I did some recreation photos from Branch’s to Barlow’s session. Much like this photo comparison above.

Branch, oh how big he has gotten and how sweet of a big brother he is. He is still very young but from what I could tell was not jealous of his brother’s attention. He would give him kisses and hugs. He’s going to nail the big brother status, I’m sure of it. He’s also very into being around the big kids, which is nice since he has some big cousins who live across from them. But I personally got to see this myself because I had to bring my daughter with me for this session. School’s out so she has to tag along with me sometimes. Branch stood right by her side constantly. At one point he got in this game of throwing a blanket on Reagan which he thought was the best game he could ever come up with. It was really quite cute and sweet, when I noticed Reagan’s face of annoyance. Poor kid has no siblings to understand how little kids look up so much to big kids, but she was doing so well letting him do his thing and not complaining once that I decided to save her from the game and took the blanket away from Branch. Poor little guy, all he wanted to do is play a fun game of throw the blanket to each other and Reagan wasn’t having it. Hence the meltdown in the bottom left corner of the above collage. You could probably hear the tearing of my heart when he started crying.

Branch got over it pretty quickly and didn’t cry again, but he did keep following Reagan around. Barlow on the other hand did cry a good bit. Sorry little fella, I know pictures wasn’t as great as your mom said it would be. He just wasn’t feeling it that day but he still did a good job, it just took a little coaxing to get some pictures out of him. You always get more pictures than you think and that was the case here too. Although I could see why you cry when your brother tries to get you in a headlock. I mean look at the concern on his face when he’s sitting in brother’s lap. It’s like he knows this isn’t going to end well. To full on headlock to totally losing it after the fact. But I can guarantee, that no babies were harmed in the making of these photographs.

Barlow is really quite the charmer when he’s throwing out those smiles. Gotta admit that I had some deja vu moments when he did because he’s the spitting image of Branch at that age. I had not originally thought they looked alike when he was first born because he really had his own look, but now I’m pretty certain they’re twins born at different times. Who knows, they’ll probably change even more and not look alike then. I guess only time will tell. In the meantime, I’m going to really soak up these moments of really capturing Barlow’s life and Branch’s as a big brother. Definitely one of my favorite packages to photograph.

If you’re interested in capturing documentary style newborn photos, milestone photos, or really any documentary style photos, you can contact Catrina at [email protected] for pricing and availability