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Rainbow Cake Smash

Posted on 12 Jan, 2022 by Sarah Hart

When a client phoned to enquire about a rainbow cake smash for her daughter, I was really excited to plan this special birthday celebration. A “rainbow baby” is a lovely term given to describe a baby born to a family after they’ve suffered a miscarriage or loss of an infant. Their arrival offers a whole load of love and light after a period of darkness. All babies are special, but a rainbow baby is a little extra special in my view!

Chioma had lots of ideas for her daughter, Kamsi’s, first birthday photo shoot which she shared with me using images from Pinterest. This can be really helpful as it gives the photographer an overview of the types of colours and style of a shoot that the client is looking for.

Pandemic baby!

All my cake smash sessions begin with a few simple portraits – and family images can be included too. Chioma wanted a clean white set up for the family shots – and I always like to do the family shots first as it gives the baby an opportunity to get used to the studio lights flashing whilst being held by mum and dad. This usually puts them at ease so that smiles will follow. However, Kamsi, isn’t just a beautiful rainbow baby…she’s also one of many “pandemic babies” and she’s not really been around too many people in the first year of her life! No matter how hard we tried (and we tried every trick in the book!) we just couldn’t get a smile out of her. Kamsi was just a little too bewildered by her first experience at a photography studio!

However, when we moved on to taking images of just Kamsi alone, in her gorgeous little romper suit and flower crown, we had a break through….just check out this beautiful smile!

Smashing the cake!

https://www.cakesunlimiteduk.co.uk/And then we moved on to the rainbow cake smash scene. My wonderful cake maker, Cakes Unlimited UK, created a giant pink cupcake to match Kamsi ‘s pink tutu skirt. And Chioma had brought some flowers for us to add to the scene which tied in with Kamsi’s floral portraits.

Kamsi needed a little encouragement to try the cake. However, once she’d had a taste, she enjoyed munching on a chunk or two. Sometimes, little ones don’t like having sticky icing on their hands! In this case, I let them have a poke at the cake (or bash the cake) with a wooden spoon. With Kamsi already walking, she was happy to wander around her cake. She would prod it with a spoon and take a little lick from the spoon!

Finally, this rainbow cake smash, like all my sessions, finished with a splash time in a bath. A few bubbles and the chance to get clean, most babies love this part of the photo shoot. But the photo below (bottom right) was literally the only shot we got……Kamsi wasn’t a fan of the bath tub!

Do you have a rainbow baby and want to celebrate with a similar theme or colours? Just pop me an email: sarah@sarahhartphotography.com with your baby’s birthday and I’ll get back to you with my availability. Would love to hear from you!

You can see another Rainbow themed cake smash here: https://sarahhartphotography.com/rainbow-baby-cake-smash/

Or to see other examples of cake smash photography visit my Cake Smash Session page.

Tags: baby cake smash • cake smash photography • Cake Smash theme • Rainbow baby • rainbow cake smash • tonbridge cake smash • tonbridge photographer