I recently purchased a pretty good Nikon camera and am going to try and take my son's first pictures by myself tomorrow.  Does anyone have some good advice or suggestions for me?  I'm a beginner so I need all the help I can get.  I'm gonna do a cake smash session and thought to tape balloons as a background on a wall in my house somewhere for that session.  Any other suggestions?

I also want to try and do my son's 1st b-day pics. Being a newbie, my only suggestion is to scope out the spot first. Try shooting the spot in your home at different times of day, with different aperatures, figure out what DOF you want, what direction the lighting is coming from etc.

I've done these things so come the actual photos I am pretty comfortable with the settings I'll be using and can focus on him, not on how to be setting my camera