If you’re a new parent, or even an experienced parents with older kids, you’ve worn the shutter button out on at least one camera.   Or perhaps the home button on your smartphone is showing sings of wear due to the pressure of your finger tap, tap, tapping it in order to take a mad amount of photos of your baby or child to share with the world on social media.  If you’re old-school, you have scrapbooks full of printed photos of your kids in which case I hope you keep that book on your coffee table for friends and family to see because goodness knows they are a rarity these days.

Why do we snap so many photos of our kids when they are baby’s, I wonder?  I am sure of a couple of reasons.  First, your baby is the cutest baby in the world and you want to document her cuteness for the world to see.  Second, deep down inside, we all want our baby to be a model.  I wished this for my son when he was an infant and worked for it.  Sebastian made it into a newspaper ad for a major department store and I couldn’t have been a prouder mom.  The work involved in coordinating modeling jobs and actually following through with them, with a baby for pete’s sake, is insane though, so that didn’t last long.  Back in the day when my son was an infant, Facebook wasn’t around so I took to online ‘cutest baby photo searches’, to share photos of my son.

I majored in photography in college, believe it or not, and had a few tips and tricks up my sleeve when entering Sebastian into photo searches when he was a baby.  While I don’t have quick access to those photos to share with you in this post, because they are 14 years old and not on this computer, I do have a few of Madelyn that I think are super adorable and might have entered into a photo search if I had thought of it.  I wouldn’t have entered the photo in the bottom right corner because I think the reflection is an unnecessary addition but I think the photos is so darn cute – I had to include it.

Here are a few of my favorite baby photo tips:

• Go for great lighting!
• Make sure the background is not distracting.  No crazy wallpaper and despite how cute you think a background of a bed of colorful flowers is, that may not be the best choice for a photo search photo.
• Your baby should be the clear focus on the photo.  Try to leave pets and siblings out of the photo.
• You can never take enough photos.  The more to choose from the better!
• Submit a photo of your baby that shows emotion.  Almost all winners of baby photo searches are smiling.

Enter your baby and they could win!

Through November 12, 2014, you can enter your baby to win the Gerber.com/Photosearch!  Simply upload your favorite recent photo (no more than 30 days old) of your Gerber baby, up to 48 months of age.  Your baby will have the chance of winning the Grand Prize of $50,000, one year of Gerber food and the possibility for your child to star in a future advertisement for Gerber as the 2014 spokesbaby!  While you’re on the site, check out the previous entrants and winners.  You’ll drool over them.. or maybe that’s just me. 🙂  You can be a part of the voting process as well!  Anyone can cast a vote for the six milestone categories and the Gerber panel of judges will select the Grand Prize winner from all eligible photo entries in January 2015.