My First Newborn Shoot

amkphotography · Jan 5, 2009

So this little guy is only 12 days old today, 11 days in the photos, and born on Christmas Eve. This was my first shot at a newborn shoot. Constructive criticism is welcome.

The big brother, 2.5 years old, wanted to sit in the basket his brother was in.

And there are more on my flickr. And if you have a flickr, add me I love making new friends.

lschaaf · Jan 5, 2009

I love the brother in the basket! I think #2 would have been better if you didn't cut off his head so much. I also looked at your set and I know cutting the head is a popular technique, but it seems most of your shots were cropped like that or the head was just going off the edge and if that was done for me personally, I would have liked to have seen more variety, head chop and no head chop. But they are beautiful picutes!

For what my beginner opinion is worth...

eyeye · Jan 5, 2009

I like #1. I would like the ones of the older child more if there was some eye contact going on. But I like they are a little outside the box pose wise

I dislike 2 and I don't know why.

amkphotography · Jan 5, 2009

Thank you for your thoughts.
The second one I posted here was not cropped like that purposely, but from how I had the positioned and then he lifted his head so I moved quickly to capture it. But overall, I liked how it came out.

The older brother definitely did not want his brother in the spotlight, he was being a ham!

eyeye · Jan 5, 2009

I looked at your flickr and had a few thoughts. But I wonder if you are editing eyes? They look overdone.

Can you share what your set up was?

digitaldetours · Jan 5, 2009

overall, they look great and i'm sure mom was very happy with them.

amkphotography · Jan 6, 2009

eyeye said:
I looked at your flickr and had a few thoughts. But I wonder if you are editing eyes? They look overdone.

Can you share what your set up was?

I do edit eyes in Photoshop, but mostly I just do a little editing, in some I did more just for fun not for the actual prints if necessary.

In the newborn shoot, my setup was fairly simple. I had natural lighting streaming in, but I used my two clamp lights each with 60-watt bulbs in soft-white. And I am just learning more about lighting so I know I have a long way to go. My photography teacher this last semester actually told me that in some of my portraits, and other peoples', to lighten the eyes some. Sometimes I just go "farther" like in this one because she naturally has beautiful eyes, and I wanted to really bring them out. Also in the newborn shots, I tried using my reflector.

amkphotography · Jan 6, 2009

digitaldetours said:
overall, they look great and i'm sure mom was very happy with them.

Thank you. :mrgreen: Yes, she was very happy with them. She likes the second one, a lot, and many of the others.

eyeye · Jan 6, 2009

The trick is getting enough light in the eyes when shooting it. They will really pop out and not look fake. I think the very very most you should do is some slight sharpening, slightest lightening and editing carefully the catch lights. It should take under a minute per eye. I know it is very popular right now to give children scary pop out eyes. Some of them are well done too. But I think they will end up dating the picture like selective coloring.

Just my opinion.

Dick Sanders · Jan 6, 2009

I think the second one is a classic. I'm just glad to see the pic without the volume turned up!

amkphotography · Jan 6, 2009

eyeye said:
The trick is getting enough light in the eyes when shooting it. They will really pop out and not look fake. I think the very very most you should do is some slight sharpening, slightest lightening and editing carefully the catch lights. It should take under a minute per eye. I know it is very popular right now to give children scary pop out eyes. Some of them are well done too. But I think they will end up dating the picture like selective coloring.

Just my opinion.

Thanks for your opinion! Right now, my lighting still needs work, but I'm pretty much just starting out with actual lights instead of available light or natural light. But I will learn in time.