Hello, I am a nurse in a neonatal ICU and when we have infants die in our unit or stillbirths in the labor and delivery unit the nurses take photos of the deceased baby for the parents. I had to do this this past weekend and truly struggled to get good poses and shots. The most I have photographed is my dog. I ended up getting some cute shots of his feet, and a couple of him cuddling a teddy, but I knew a professional photographer would give these parents much better photos than me to remember their baby by.
With that said, there is a photography volunteer group called Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep which consists of photographers who volunteer their time and skills to take photos of the baby at the hospital after they pass, sometimes with parents in the pictures. We usually do photos in black and white to hide the discoloration and bruising which occurs after death. It is an emotional and hard thing to do, but something that means so much to the family.
There is only one photographer in 25 miles of my hospital on the site as a volunteer and I wondered if this is a group photographers knew about or would be interested in participating in? There are also volunteer spots with the group where you can gently touch up photos of the babies submitted by nurses or parents if there is not a photographer available to come to the hospital.
Im not trying to pressure anyone into doing it, I just want to put out the information and see if anyone is interested. Remember though that it can be difficult emotionally to do this and that you would likely see some babies who look perfectly healthy, yet died, and some who are very tiny or deformed and both ways can be hard to process.