October Monthly Baby Milestone Photo Ideas + Editing Tips

October monthly milestone photo themes are pretty easy: PUMPKINS! You can make it as playful or spooky as you'd like. But since it's pretty basic, I decided to do a little photo editing tutorial to really make your DIY photo shoot pictures come out looking professional!

Supplies:

Pumpkins
Gourds
Fall foliage (optional)
Letterboard
White sheet
Optional: Hay

This setup is SUPER simple. You'll just lay out a white sheet, top with pumpkins and gourds (I generally like groups of 3s), and any fall foliage or hay if you'd like a fuller look.

I suggest laying everything out and looking at your set up through your cameras lens before bringing baby out to make sure you like how it all is framed!

I share more tips for setting up your milestone photos and photographing baby here!

Spooky Milk Bath Supplies:

Pretend spiders or eyeballs
Powdered milk
White sheet

In a sink or baby bath tub or large bowl/dish of some sort, lay any necessary padding or support for baby. Top with a white sheet. Add some water and either breast milk or evaporated powdered milk. The white sheet makes it so you need less to get the “creamy” effect.

From there you can add whatever spooky supplies you want! Eyeballs, spiders, whatever really!

October Fall Letterboard phrases:

Cutest pumpkin in the patch
Autumn leaves + pumpkins please
The only thing Spooky this Halloween is how little mom sleeps
All treats, no tricks!
Oh my gourd, our little pumpkin is # months

How To Edit Photos In Lightroom Mobile:

Before we jump into editing your photos we need to talk about lighting. You can't out edit bad lighting unfortunately!

Lighting

This monthly baby milestone photo I shot inside. When shooting indoors, find a sunny spot of your house with indirect sunlight and shoot inline with the light source. So your back would be towards the window of the room your taking photos in to get the best overall lighting.

If you need to supplement, you can use a lighting set. I have this set and this ring light and both have worked wonderfully.

If you’re unsure about your lighting, I always suggest pausing and editing a photo to see how it’ll ultimately come out.

Editing

To edit, I use the free lightroom mobile app – follow along in the video tutorial above!

I generally start by adjusting the warmth and vibrance which can be found in “color”.

Then I move over to “light” and adjust the exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, and blacks until I get what I'm going for.

From there I go back into color, and click “mix.”

I generally move my yellow hue to more orange then up the luminance which makes things a bit whiter and brighter.

For this photo I decided to move the red hue a bit more orange so his outfit matched a little more with the pumpkins.

There was still a weird yellow-dingy tinge to the photo that (see video) so I went into grading. For the shadows I made everything a little more pink and for the highlights I moved them a touch more blue. Whenever things look yellow/dingy blue will usually correct it and by adjusting it in grading, you don't need to sacrifice the overall warmth of your photo.

And there you have it! Now you can edit your DIY baby photos at home like a pro!