Cake Smash “The new way to celebrate your baby's first birthday”

There are some great ideas for celebrating your child’s life journey, one in particular is the “Cake Smash”. Gone are the days of balloons and a Victoria sponge. If your baby is having a birthday, there's only one way to celebrate and that’s with a cake smash.

This craze started over in the US, and over the past few years, parents across the UK have been joining in. So what is a cake smash you may be wondering? A cake smash is where a one year old gets messy with a cake and a professional photographer captures the moment.

This was my experience on this new birthday craze and some of the issues that came up from a photographer’s point of view.

Someone gave my number to a young couple whose child was reaching their first birthday, they rang and asked if I do “Cake Smashes”. I have to admit I hadn’t done any “New Born” photoshoots but as it was a recommendation I decided to go with it, why not? I don’t blame you for thinking at this point expensive camera gear, baby and cake may not be the best recipe for success. Being a father and knowing what babies can be like I thought I should first meet the parents and the young one to be photographed. This turned out to be very beneficial in breaking down any barriers and getting the child to feel comfortable with me and the camera. At this point it was also a good idea to discuss what the parents expectations were, how many photos they wanted and what the baby was going to be wearing and so forth. I suggested a couple of changes of clothing as I imagined this was not going to be a tidy affair.

Very soon the day of the shoot came round, I was excited to try something new and was focused mainly on the technical aspect of the shoot, lighting and lenses etc. Upon arrival, we set the stage and a very large plastic matt for obvious reasons and began the photoshoot. At first it took a short while to get into the shoot and relax the baby. Note to self baby should always be fed before the shoot and have had a nap for best results.

As you would expect young infants are completely unpredictable more so with a big fat juicy cake in their midst. I came in close to take a few shots but could see it was creating a distraction and too much curiosity, something I didn’t want given the amount of cake in the vicinity.

At this point I thought it would be a good idea to change tactic, I swapped out my 24-70 lens for a 70-200 zoom lens and moved way back into the room. This made me much happier and surprisingly so for the baby too who became more relaxed and focused on matters in hand such as the big fat cake. With the parents distractions helping the baby to feel safe and calm she began to “dig in” to the cake, by this I mean obliterate the cake. I sat happily far away from the set getting some great photos of the cake smash and was delighted with the outcome.

I learned some very valuable lessons that this is not for everyone, I think it takes a certain type of photographer to work with such young children and I take my hat off to them. Whilst I did enjoy this event and the parents were very happy with the results, I may have just been lucky on this occasion.

Lets see what the next big craze will be and with 7.8 billion people on this beautiful planet one thing is for sure… “There’s plenty of cake to go around”