Monthly photo packages are popular and, we think, a slightly worse idea than they appear.
The problem with twelve
Babies do not develop on a monthly schedule. Months two, three and four look remarkably similar in a photograph. Months seven and eight can look like different children. Twelve evenly spaced sessions gives you several near-duplicates and misses the transitions.
The stages that genuinely look different
Around three months. Head control arrives, the curled newborn shape is gone, and the first real social smiles appear.
Once they sit unaided. Usually somewhere in the middle of the first year, though it varies a lot between healthy babies. This is the widest-open window for photography in the entire year — alert, responsive, and staying where they are put.
Once they crawl. The session changes from posed to reactive. Faster shooting, more frames, a different kind of picture.
Once they walk. Usually around the first birthday, and often combined with it.
Those are observations from the studio rather than clinical guidance — every baby arrives at them on their own schedule, and when yours does is a question for your paediatrician rather than for us.
Booking by stage
A plan that says "the session after he sits up unaided" survives contact with a real baby. One that says "the eighth of March" does not. We hold milestone bookings loosely for exactly that reason and move them at short notice without a fee.
Making it a series
The point of a plan rather than four separate bookings is that the images hang together. A consistent theme language and colour grade across the year means the set works when you lay it out — which is when most families realise they wanted a series rather than four unrelated shoots.