My very first newborn photos. What I learned and what I need to learn!

[bennielou]

Great. I'd love to see your take on it. I really want to know more.

 

[bennielou]

Raw is 21 metapixals. You can have it if you want it, but it shouldn't be much different.

 

[Robin Usagani]

 

[bennielou]

Sorry it took me so long to respond Schwettylens. (Last night was Survivor night and I'm a freak for that show!)
You did an AMAZING job! Could you explain what you did? I really love it.

 

[Robin Usagani]

Portraiture and lots of cloning.

 

[bennielou]

I was using Portraiture too. I used it on a selection and "Normal" mode. Which mode did you use? I'm guessing I should have used something lower Also I was patching and not cloning. Maybe my selections were too large. (Patch fatigue:LOL) Do you prefer the clone over the patch and if so why? Just curious.

Thanks again for working on it. It's beautiful.

 

[AmazingGrace0385]

None taken. I used vintage actions on a couple of those last photos, so the color would look kind of off. That being said I am still new to a lot of this, but I just checked my monitor colors here: Calibrate Your Monitor, For Free, Via the Web | UNEASYsilence - And they are dead on. My brightness was a tad off though. I don't have a fancy calibration software, yet. So take this info as you'd like.

 

[bennielou]

No problem AG. The reason I'm a freak about being exact on calibration is because I upload to the lab, and after years of paying double shipping (once to my house, and then to the client) I stopped having them shipped here first to check on them. I had calibrated to lab specs and they all looked fine, so I just started to trust in the calibration-thus saving myself 10 bucks for repackaging and reshipping. That's why I'm so nutty about it. If I'm off, that means my reprints are off, and I put in orders almost every day. I wouldn't want someone getting a greenish purple photo!

I occassionally use some funky actions too. One of my weirder ones I use is Cross prossessing. Clients don't get it most of the times but every once in a while they love it. Can't help but throw it out there. I give them the normal file, and then the funky one and let them decide. Anyhoo, I'd get bored doing the same thing all the time.

And being newish to the business is not a crime. I was just asking for the reason above.

But back to calibration: Laptops are notoriously bad about being too bright. I process my photos on the brightside already and this has been hard for my clients who view their proofs that way. I've had to bring them to my home to show them the real photo, and just how it will be printed by the lab.

Also lab calibration is a bit different than web calibration. If you only show via web, you are probably ok calibrating to web specs. In other words, you Calibration Via Web might work well for you. I have to be super specific because I've tweaked out my Photoshop profiles, and they have to work primarily for lab work. They may be off via web, but my prints have to be as perfect as I can make them. I want my print to come to the client EXACTLY as I'm seeing it on my NEC High Def. My photos will work a bit off on the web, but that's ok, because they are fairly close.

Does that make any sense? I just wanted you to know I wasn't ripping on you, it was just really important to me to know if I was truly off on calibration.

 

[Dajuan]

Schwettylens, I like what you did in post. No doubt that clone work takes more time, but the result is beautiful. Bennielou, thanks for sharing.

 

[adarlingshot]

Flakes and jaundice and mottly colours are all wonderful parts ov being a newborn photographer. The temptation to just run smoothing really high is there, but baby looks like a plastic doll when you go overboard. What type of processing tools do you have at your disposal?

 

[twocolor]

Hey! Just barely saw these! I would add a titch of yellow to these. I downloaded the image and checked your color. Your values are Cyan 7%, Magenta 44%, Yellow 37%, and black 0. In general, african american skin tones need to have equal portions of magenta to yellow OR yellow can be 2-3% higher than magenta. On caucasian skin tones, you want you want your yellow approx. 10% higher than your magenta tones.

As far as posing goes, those really awesome poses are done USUALLY while baby is asleep . . . super milk drunk asleep lol!!! Babies under 2 weeks are still very used to being all squished up in mom's belly, and actually sleep really well once you squish them, and wrap them warmly. My first set of pics of a newborn are done with baby asleep and wrapped up. Gradually through the session I ever so slowly start to unwrap the baby!

These are really good, crisp, exposure is nailed. The rest will come with practice!!!!!! Go youtube search videos on how to pose babies . . . pretty fun to watch!

 

[bennielou]

Hi Adarlingshot,
I have pretty much everything. Lightroom 3, CS5, and a few thousand actions and scripts. (I'm a action/script junkie.)

 

[bennielou]

Hey! Just barely saw these! I would add a titch of yellow to these. I downloaded the image and checked your color. Your values are Cyan 7%, Magenta 44%, Yellow 37%, and black 0. In general, african american skin tones need to have equal portions of magenta to yellow OR yellow can be 2-3% higher than magenta. On caucasian skin tones, you want you want your yellow approx. 10% higher than your magenta tones.

As far as posing goes, those really awesome poses are done USUALLY while baby is asleep . . . super milk drunk asleep lol!!! Babies under 2 weeks are still very used to being all squished up in mom's belly, and actually sleep really well once you squish them, and wrap them warmly. My first set of pics of a newborn are done with baby asleep and wrapped up. Gradually through the session I ever so slowly start to unwrap the baby!

These are really good, crisp, exposure is nailed. The rest will come with practice!!!!!! Go youtube search videos on how to pose babies . . . pretty fun to watch!

TwoColor! Thanks for the great reply. That's exactly the info I needed. More yellow, eh? Wow, I never thought of that. The father is very light skinned and the mother medium skinned if that makes a difference. Wow, it was soooooo hard! I have the utmost respect for you guys who do this all the time. It was so freaking difficult!

 

[noomen]

awesome...what camera n lens u used?what technique u use?i will deliver coming early may 2011..i wish to learn some technique for my newborn pictures..i wish to learn from u

 

[Lyncca]

Cindy, I took a whack at it. I didn't completely touch up the flakes on her arm, but the spot healing brush would clean that up and I think it would have been a little better on a full res. file, but here I did portraiture and boutwell, but on portraiture, I did it on several layers with varying strengths on different parts of the baby. I think you can see a little more skin detail this way and I warmed it up. I tend to like my pics more on the warm side.