Can someone give me some advise please :)

[Sarah23]

How do you get this kind of creamy, light, not-blotchy skin? I know babies/kids have such nice skin naturally, but there has got to be SOME pp on the skin in the shot below! My 9 month old has nice skin, but in photos it still looks a bit blotchy/pink. I have tried playing around with my layers and different things, but I am stuck. Could someone give me some idea, or point me in the right direction of what to search for when looking for a tutorial on this, or SOMETHING please!

Here is a picture to show you what I am trying to achieve.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rayelaw/2507430904/in/photostream/

 

[manaheim]

For the record, I am totally guessing here...

1. Looks like the shot might be a bit overexposed, which would clip some of the detail and maybe smooth out the skin tones?
2. The shot could certainly be airbrushed a bit.
3. The baby might be some sort of alibaster alien.

I went back and looked at some of my baby pics, and they don't have that pure alibaster tone to them, but they aren't overexposed and skin tone is still pretty even.

Example...

 

[tirediron]

I can't see the image (Flickr is blocked by my work firewall) but I'm guessing a lot of the problems can be solved by changing your light source. Use of diffusers and perhaps a white/gold reflector should help a lot.

 

[Alfred D.]

Like Manaheim says: overexposed, airbrushed, and E.T...

 

[Rhubarb]

Sarah, if you can post a sample I might be able to give you some ideas.