How to Shoot a Fruit Bath Photo Session

Today I’m sharing How to Shoot a Fruit Bath Photo Session. The traditional question of how to do a milk bath for baby has made a new turn into fruit bath photography. Learn tips for a baby fruit bath, shooting the fruit bath pictures and what fruits float and don’t!

Who doesn’t love babies and fruit?! How about babies IN fruit?!

With spring here and summer fast approaching, fruit baths are becoming all the rage! And really how could they not be?! ITS ADORABLE! I’m going to share my process of my fruit bath session and hope to see you replicate your own version!

Before, I get into all the ins and out of the session I want to share a little about myself. My names Berlandie Lee. I am a natural light photographer and the owner of HappiLee Ever After Photography. I shoot a variety of sessions. Birth, children and families being primarily what I focus on! I recently ventured into the boudoir photography, which has been fun, however, any session where I get to work with little ones easily has my heart! I am a military wife and momma to a spunky and beautiful one year old, Landrick. I am so incredibly blessed to be able to stay home and watch him grow, while I do what I love.

Enough about me. Lets get on to the real fun stuff!

How to Shoot a Fruit Bath Photo Session

1- Go Traditional or Make It Your Own!

As a mom myself, I get so excited about sessions like this! The little ones love it, and it really show cases each one of their individual personalities. What makes it even better is there really is NO wrong way of doing it! You can make it totally your own or stick to just super traditional.

For this particular session with Landrick, I chose to stick fairly traditional.

2- Fruit Bath Safety

One of the most important things to be cautious of when doing a fruit bath session is babies safety. You want to make sure that the child is able to sit up on their own, 100%. This definitely is not a session you would want to do with a newborn. I would encourage ages 6months and up!

3- What You need for a Fruit Bath Photo Session

For supplies, you will need, of course your adorable subject, your choice of fruit, and either a tub, or sink for filling with water!

I chose to use our kitchen sink for our session. We have a super awesome big window right by the sink, which lets in awesome natural light, so this was perfect!

4- Step by Step Guide for a Fruit Bath Session

I started by filling the sink about a quarter of the way up.
From there, I placed baby in the water and then continued to fill with water till the sink was almost completely full. Doing it this way keeps from having water over flow.
Once, I had a good amount of water filled I added my fruit. I used Strawberries with Lemons. (Landrick loves lemons!) You will need about 2 lbs of strawberries to fill a standard size sink. If you are using a tub or larger sink, I would be sure to atleast double that amount!

*As a disclaimer, Blueberries do NOT float!

After you add your fruits, baby is bound to start grabbing and tasting! That Is totally okay! It makes for adorable candid moments!
You can totally turn the tap on a very low stream and allow it to overflow, which makes for super nice detail shots, as well!
From there I moved around all around to get all different angles. One of my favorite shots was an over head shot of the tub. It really shows all the detail of the session, but also made for a different perspective.

5- Things to Consider

Lighting! Some things, I would be sure to consider would be lighting. For fruit bath sessions, you are going to want to use as much natural light as possible. Outdoors, is great, or a kitchen sink, with a nice window casting in some natural light. Natural light is going to be your best bet here, for a couple reasons. One being, ANY time you can shoot natural light, do it. Natural light is your best friend with photography. Secondly, it really gives it that summery feel, which really brings the images to life. I used No off camera lighting, or flash with these images. Everything was shot with natural light.

Allergies? You also, want to consider baby. I cant express that enough. I would be sure to make sure the child has no allergies what so ever, as well as sensitive skin. Especially if you choose to do lemons as an accent in your baths. Citruses can sometimes be very strong on sensitive baby skin, and because of that I strongly advise having baby wear a cloth diaper of some sort.

Editing Fruit Bath Photos: When editing these type of images, it is all up to you! I have seen several different styles. Some rustic, and darker, others more true to color. My personal preference was true to color with a touch of light and airy. This really helped make the strawberries pop!

Photo gear? You might be wondering what kind of lens would be best to use? Popular Photography gives you those tips in their article on How to Create a Surreal Milk Bath Photography!

This session was easily one of my favorites! It really show cases my little guys silly side, but also is just a really fun project that kids can really get involved with. Some children are camera shy, and what’s so great with the fruit baths is even the candid, not smiling shots make for super cute ones!

I hope you are able to recreate your own fruit baths and find some of these tips helpful, but most of all, I hope to see some of your work in the future!