Merry Christmas
24 December, 2010 09:51
We had a great baby shoot yesterday. It was a lot of fun and we learned a lot.
We have been getting ready for Christmas here. It takes a lot of time, but it is fun as well. I think we are ready to settle in and enjoy Christmas Eve and get in a good spirit for Christmas Day.
We did our first baby shoot yesterday. It was a learning experience, but it was fun too. The some our favorite pictures are here.
The baby was about a week old and she was sure cute. She is the first born, and the Mom and Dad are cute and dote on her. This is a Christmas present from Grandma and she was there too. We went to their home for the shoot. They have a beautiful fireplace and mantle that made a great backdrop for pictures.
In all, it went really well. We got the lighting to work pretty quickly. We used an SB800 on a stand with a shoot through umbrella as the main and another SB800 with a Gary Fong for fill. We used Alien Bees as triggers. That worked really well. We set the lights to manuel mode. Partly because the Alien Bees don't do TTL and partly because I wanted to have more control. It took about three test shots to get them dialed in. Then we had to do a few adjustments as we moved things around, but it went really well. We have to get a bit better at seeing how the lighting is in the camera. I had to add about half to one full stop of exposure in post processing on most of the shots.
We used a shutter speed of 1/200 so we were safe with the sync speed of the camera. We used a f/8 aperture so that we had a bit more depth of field for multiple people. That worked out really well. Even when we had Mom, Dad, and baby, the focus was good, but the backgrounds were soft. With the backgrounds we had, it was good not to have them too far out of focus anyway.
We were there for about an hour and 40 min. Part of that was because the baby got really fussy and Mom had to take her in the other room and rock her to get her settled back down. That seemed to be too long for a baby.
When we got there, baby was curled up on Dad's chest. We tried to take pictures of baby laying on a blanket first and that was a mistake. The next time, we would do pictures of Mom and Dad holding the baby first, since that is more comfortable and less upsetting for baby.
This baby is used to being wrapped up and snuggled. She was also used to being dressed. So she wasn't so keen on being unwrapped and laid out on a blanket for some of the typical baby shots. And even getting her feet out to take pictures of them was annoying to her. So I think it would be a good idea to get to know the family and the baby before starting the shoot. Then arrange the shoot so that the things that the baby will be most comfortable get shot first so that baby is happy for them. Then move on to the things that will be more likely to bother her/him. That way you will get the most shots with the baby happy. Once baby starts being fussy, it's hard to recover.
The flash bothered her a little, but not really to bad. I wasn't sure how that would work, but it was OK.
It was a really fun shoot and we had a lot of fun doing it. I think we came away with some really nice shots too.
We did our first baby shoot yesterday. It was a learning experience, but it was fun too. The some our favorite pictures are here.
In all, it went really well. We got the lighting to work pretty quickly. We used an SB800 on a stand with a shoot through umbrella as the main and another SB800 with a Gary Fong for fill. We used Alien Bees as triggers. That worked really well. We set the lights to manuel mode. Partly because the Alien Bees don't do TTL and partly because I wanted to have more control. It took about three test shots to get them dialed in. Then we had to do a few adjustments as we moved things around, but it went really well. We have to get a bit better at seeing how the lighting is in the camera. I had to add about half to one full stop of exposure in post processing on most of the shots.
We used a shutter speed of 1/200 so we were safe with the sync speed of the camera. We used a f/8 aperture so that we had a bit more depth of field for multiple people. That worked out really well. Even when we had Mom, Dad, and baby, the focus was good, but the backgrounds were soft. With the backgrounds we had, it was good not to have them too far out of focus anyway.
We were there for about an hour and 40 min. Part of that was because the baby got really fussy and Mom had to take her in the other room and rock her to get her settled back down. That seemed to be too long for a baby.
When we got there, baby was curled up on Dad's chest. We tried to take pictures of baby laying on a blanket first and that was a mistake. The next time, we would do pictures of Mom and Dad holding the baby first, since that is more comfortable and less upsetting for baby.
This baby is used to being wrapped up and snuggled. She was also used to being dressed. So she wasn't so keen on being unwrapped and laid out on a blanket for some of the typical baby shots. And even getting her feet out to take pictures of them was annoying to her. So I think it would be a good idea to get to know the family and the baby before starting the shoot. Then arrange the shoot so that the things that the baby will be most comfortable get shot first so that baby is happy for them. Then move on to the things that will be more likely to bother her/him. That way you will get the most shots with the baby happy. Once baby starts being fussy, it's hard to recover.
The flash bothered her a little, but not really to bad. I wasn't sure how that would work, but it was OK.
It was a really fun shoot and we had a lot of fun doing it. I think we came away with some really nice shots too.