Cake smash – What a way to celebrate!

I’m not going to pretend like I don’t love cake. Nobody likes a liar. But when I realised I could extend my business ideas by incorporating cake AND photography in a super cute way?! Well, you can only imagine my excitement.

Cake smashes are steadily growing in popularity on the photography scene, usually used to celebrate baby turning one. I understand that it may sound like a weird idea – sourcing a perfectly good cake just to take photos of a baby making a giant mess of it! With that said, cake smashes are a lot of fun for everyone involved and it seems as though the quirky trend is here to stay.

I personally suggest booking cake smash photoshoots for approximately 2 weeks before baby’s first birthday, that way you have a unique and fun display piece for their birthday party. Many parents book even earlier so they can utilise these images for their child’s birthday invites. Cake smashes are a great way to capture special images for a bunch of reasons. It’s often the first time the child has eaten much cake, if any at all, and usually the first time they’ve been allowed to do whatever they want with it… whether it’s face-planting into it, putting icing in their hair, or knocking the whole thing over – anything goes.

I’ll let you in on a little secret here, cake smash images can certainly be deceiving as, a lot of the time, the baby doesn’t fully smash the cake! Most babies are more interested in fiddling with the cake, breaking it off into pieces or going in for that massive bite (something I hope for every single time!). If the baby doesn’t seem particularly fussed by the cake, I’ll ask Mum and Dad to nibble on a piece to hopefully spark some interest from bub. As time goes on and the baby becomes more comfortable and tempted by the cake, I’ll start breaking it up into pieces and placing some cake on their legs and hands. The goal as a photographer is for the baby to become interested in the cake so I can capture those gorgeous images where they look up and give us a big grin! By 12 months, most babies are crawling, which makes for extra fun and chaos as poor Mum and Dad usually spend half the session chasing after bub and positioning them back in front of the cake. Fear not, though, cake smash sessions usually wrap up quite soon – primarily because baby gets over it pretty quickly!

The key to a successful cake smash shoot is to keep it simple. Parents usually decide a standard theme for their photos or add in basic decorations – we want the focus to be on the baby! You don’t have to go overboard on the cake, either. Many parents suggest using a sponge cake because it breaks up easily and makes for a little less mess (if that’s possible). The most important thing in a cake smash session is for both you and your child to have fun! We can worry about the clean-up later.

I wanted to share some images of a recent cake smash shoot that I did with gorgeous bub Sienna and her Mum and Dad, Megan and Jay. They decided on a simple gold and pink theme for the shoot, with all the decorations and balloons coming from two dollar stores and Kmart – so easy! I made the cake stand myself and the cake was provided by a lovely local home baker. In a standard cake smash session, I usually get at least 25 gorgeous images for parents to choose from.

If you like what you see and you’d like to organise a cake smash session yourself (or perhaps book a gift session for a friend), please get in touch and we can certainly chat about your ideas!

Emma x

here is a link to the live viewing I did of sienna’s cake smash shoot.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/EJMNewbornPhotography/videos/?ref=page_internal