A womb with a view ..

Now I'm all for a nice, cutesy picture of a new-born baby, but what I saw yesterday made me fell quite, quite queasy! I'd gone down to the big Photo Show at Birmingham's NEC - a lens-fest of all things photographic, featuring stand after stand of 'all the things a photographer needs'! There were cameras, printers, tripods, workshops on how to be a Wedding Photographer (Depressing!) and .. wait for it .. a delightful selection of Wee Wombs! Yes, wee wombs! Fake, lookalike wombs! They were on a stand selling 'everything you need to take photographs of new-born babies! (Depressing, part two!) It seems that, just as Wedding photography has become utterly 'teachable' and formulaic, so indeed has baby photography, and there are certain 'must-haves' if you're going to do the job 'properly'! You must bend the baby in half - as if it's trying to force out a fart - then dangle it from a hammock (£59!) wearing a flowery tiara, and you must cover it in stupid fluffy hats and smother it with feathers as if it's in a bird's nest. However - and here's the one I've never heard of before - it seems you must put the poor little nipper into a Wee Womb and .. apparently .. pretend it's not been born yet! I mean, what's the point in that? The little bugger's just spent nine months trying to get out! Give it a break! But hey, if you've gone that far, why not go the whole hog and splurt it with fake after-birth, or wrap it in half a pound of placenta-like pork sausages? Why not shoot it on blood-covered scales set to 7lb 3? .. or shoot its arse being slapped by a rubber-clad hand? And why not ...

I'll think I'll stick to shooting them the way I always have, thank you very much ...