Bundle of Joy

Some requests lately has led me to branch out and do things I haven't done before. This time it was portraits. Not that I haven't ever shot portraits before, but not in a "serious" way. Sure, I've terrorized my relatives and chased them around with my camera, I have done candid shots and I have done the occasional family picture, but this is my first time trying my hand at studio-ish shots.

Aren't they a lovely family? It's so much fun shooting a handsome couple like this and their pretty baby boy. Baby Carson is only 10 days old in these shots and utterly adorable. I always forget how tiny babies actually are, and their itty bitty hands, and teeny weeny feet... squeeee! This is why I love photography - you get to capture precious moments like these.

Since I'm totally new to doing things like this, I asked my first customers to do some homework. I wanted them to think about what kind of pictures they wanted and to choose a setting with the best light conditions possible. They did their homework well, naturally, since mother is a fellow teacher, and when I arrived things were well prepared. They had moved some furniture, prepare a cozy "bed" for the baby and timed everything well so that baby Carson was awake and happy. This made my job easy as pie. A hundred or so snaps later I was ready.

Post-processing portraits is a bit more complex than post-processing flowers, landscapes or abstracts. I always run an "action" (what Photoshop calls a macro) that makes several copies of the background layer and then adds a number of adjustment layers. Tweaking these, doing some general touch up and a bit of sharpening is usually enough in the cases I mentioned, but portraits are something else.

Thanks to W1K I found this great tutorial on how to enhance eyes and how to work with the dodge and burn tools to enhance specific features. Little things like that can really make a difference and make your shots sparkle. I may take a bit more time, but it's well worth the effort, and it's fun to post-process pretty subjects :)

So, yet an other experience richer I am happy to say that it is a lot of fun to branch out and test my limits. I'm going to try and test more new things in the future.

/MrsHjort