Little Sadie

I had officially called off doing any more baby sessions. It was always difficult for me take the girls to the babysitter, lug everything to someone's home, set everything up, tear down and take it back home. So it's been awhile. But my friend had a baby and I had her just come over for a play session. It was much easier to have people come to my home, that I'm seriously considering offering them again. I have a blog friend Melanie who does really beautiful work. She has given me lots of good advice at how to expand and create mini set pieces. So this week I'm going to try to create my first little hardwood and fabric backdrop set piece. I can't wait.



This is the shot I always try to get and it sometimes doesn't work. I love this laying in the hands shot, but it doesn't work unless the baby looks relaxed and peaceful, and the hands holding the baby look just as relaxed. The face can't be squished and the arms can't be flailing. The facial expression is so important with a shot like this. You can have any stress. This is probably the most nerve wracking shot for the parents because it feels a little vicarious. This took us a couple attempts to get it good and relaxed. I'm glad I pushed to try one more time before the end of the shoot.


Unexpected shot. In between naked shots, the moms wrap them up and cuddle them. My friend Brooke had her wrapped in a towel because Sadie had just peed on the backdrop. (I tell them this always happens and it's no big deal, but the parents feel so bad about it anyway.) So Sadie was wrapped up in a towel with her Mama and it was so adorable how she was peeking out. We quickly threw a blanket around the towel and voila, precious shot.
In photoshop I did a slight glow, a gaussian blur, pulled out the eyes, and burned in the eyes and lips. I also found a soft action that was really pretty although I use those sparingly. I also didn't like the direction of the original, so I tilted her head to be more diaganol. Then eliminated the black backdrop and parts of Brooke that were in the shot and replaced with a blur to nothing. Maybe it's C- photoshop but it works.




It's the really big towel illusion! A total of 9 towels were used to get this look. Also I have to square off the towels in photoshop. I usually fluff the bottom towel back out in photoshop, but I forgot to do that. The bottom one always gets more squished.


This ws a crazy big flower. I finally just took a shot of her without the flower, shrunk the flower from the previous shot, and put it on the plain headband. Ths is more C- photoshop.


This was an experiment. It would probably be prettier on a hardwood floor set piece.
The baby was off center, and it bugged me, so I shifted her to the right and had to stitch together the blanket top on the left with an ealier image that had that info. I'm so neurotic sometimes.


We thought it needed a bow, so I grabbed the only bow I could find, which was green. I knew I would change the color later. Once I changed the color I didn't like the multi colored quilts, so I changed them to rose tones.


Did the same with this as the eye's opened shot before.




I always soften the skin with a slight glow and gaussian blur. The original wasn't balanced right (in my opinion) for this aspect ratio so I moved the baby up closer to Brooke. (which eliminated the surplace of black space up to the left, that was throwing me off.) I was toying the cropping really tight and cutting off most of Brooke's hands, but I settled on pulling the baby closer.