Newborn Photographer in Auburn, CA

Auburn exists because Claude Chana found gold here in May 1848, months after Marshall's strike at Sutter's Mill. Thousands came for what was first called the North Fork Dry Diggings; it was a town of fifteen hundred within a year and Placer County's seat by 1851. Unlike most of what the gold rush threw up, it never emptied out — and it is, without much argument, one of the loveliest towns within reach of this studio.

What that left is one of the most intact Gold Country downtowns in California. Old Town sits on the ground the first camps were pitched on, the streets follow the paths miners walked, and the Placer County Courthouse — four years in the building, 1894 to 1898, clock tower and all — still looks down over the whole of it from the hill. Jesica never quite tires of the drive up.

Newborn sessions are photographed in the Lodi studio rather than in Auburn, and that is not a preference. A newborn session needs a room held at eighty degrees, every wrap within reach and no doorbell, and none of that travels in a bag. It is the one session where coming to the studio is straightforwardly better than being visited.

Auburn is about an hour and fifteen minutes from the studio, sixty-seven miles down out of the foothills, and that is a real ask with a newborn — so it is worth saying what it buys. Newborn dates are held against the due date rather than fixed to a morning, so the drive is made once, on a day chosen when the baby is ready. Auburn families are among Jesica's favourites and often pair it with a maternity session in the canyon a few weeks earlier, which turns two long drives into one decision made once.