8 October 2026 · 2 min read
How to take a photo of your baby every day (and keep going)
A daily photo is the simplest way to see your baby grow. Here’s how to make it a ten-second habit that survives the sleepless weeks.
The first weeks with a newborn blur together. A single photo a day is one of the few things that cuts through: a year later you can flick through and watch your baby change, day by day.
The hard part isn’t the photo. It’s remembering, every single day, while running on very little sleep. These are the things that make it stick.
Tie it to something that already happens
Habits stick best when they hang off something you already do. Pick a moment that happens every day whatever else goes on:
- after the first feed of the morning
- during the nappy change before bath time
- when they wake from their first nap
Same moment, every day. You stop having to remember the photo, because the routine reminds you.
Use the same spot and the same light
If you want the photos to look good side by side, or to turn them into a timelapse later, consistency matters more than any camera setting.
- Choose one spot. The changing mat, the same corner of the sofa, the cot. Somewhere with a plain background is easiest.
- Use daylight from a window. Soft, indirect light is kind to babies and to phone cameras. Avoid the ceiling light directly overhead, which makes harsh shadows.
- Shoot from the same height and angle. Straight above, at arm’s length, is easy to repeat.
Line it up with yesterday’s photo
The secret of photo-a-day projects that look polished is alignment: your baby in roughly the same place in every frame. The easiest way is to see yesterday’s photo faintly while you take today’s. That’s why the camera in Journee shows the previous day’s photo as a ghost to line up against.
If your camera doesn’t do that, a simple trick is to keep your baby’s eyes on the same grid line each day.
Keep it to ten seconds
Don’t wait for a perfect smile. A sleepy, yawning or grumpy face is still today’s face, and a year from now those are the ones you’ll treasure. Take a few shots, keep the best one, move on.
Share the job
You don’t have to do this alone. If one parent does mornings and the other does evenings, agree whose photo it is that day, or let whoever’s holding the baby take it. A shared journal means it doesn’t matter whose phone took it.
Missed a day? Carry on
You will miss days. Everyone does. A timelapse with a few gaps still looks lovely, and nobody watching will notice. If you took a photo that day but forgot to add it, add it later from your camera roll: Journee’s import sorts older photos into the right days.
The only rule that matters: start again tomorrow.
Start before you feel ready
The best day to start is today, even if your baby is already a few weeks or months old. Every day you capture from now on is one you’ll be glad to have.