1st Birthday Shoot

[Michelle13]

Hi everyone. I am new here, well I've read a lot of posts but this is my first time posting anything. I'm not a profressional or anything. I just have always loved taking pictures and I took a class to learn the very basics of DSLR cameras. I've been practicing on my niece, these are pictures from her 1st birthday cake smash. There's a lot of problems with them. They are taken on a very high ISO so the quality isn't great and they look very grainy blown up (thankfully mom is just using them for invitations and thank you cards) but I was working indoors and using only natural light so I was trying to do the best I could. I don't have photoshop or lightroom either though I'm hoping to get one of them soon, I just use free editors such as gimp and picasa. Anyways, I just wanted to share. I'm hoping to be able to practice and learn a lot more so I can become better. Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

 

[acellis]

Well done! What a QT! You have access to the perfect model to perfect your photographic skills. You nailed the focus of the eyes and caught a precious moment. If you want feedback on how to create "artful" photographs just keep reading the posts and ask for specifically for criticism and comments. I think these are great pictures. Arthur

 

[sekhar]

Cute baby and shots, especially given you only used available light! They don't seem that grainy to me?

 

[ralphh]

Really great shots! Mum must be pleased! I suspect you could print these quite large before you started to see noise in the print - I always find it's MUCH more noticable on screen than on paper; I just had a 30x20 inch print of a photo that on screen I could clearly see some noise (though it wasn't terribly strong, or objectionable) and I can't see any in the print at all even with my face right up against it.

If you can't afford the fullblown Photoshop CS then considder Photoshop Elements; i've been using it for at least 10 years and it's always performed well. It got a HUGE upgrade with version 9 (think it was 9 - Im sure someone will kindly correct me if it as 8 or 10) when they added layer masks, which for my use was the only thing really tempting me to upgrade to CS.

Some poeple find lightroom to be hugely useful, and while it is great for adding whole-photo processing to large numbers of photos, I find that I tend to take few and work on an even smaller number of photos, but then like to spend a long time editing them to get them exactly how I want them, so I hardly ever use lightroom at all - I tend to just pull them straight into Elements unless I need to make a fix that Elements can't do in one button click, but Lightroom can, like removing purple fringing etc.

 

[RMThompson]

Great stuff, well shot.

I would only suggest not to do ALL of your baby photos from a looking down perspective. Get down on their level and shoot them lower, it looks more interesting in your second image with cake on the face because people don't see babies and small children from that angle. Especially with the numbers, a little further down would've worked well!

 

[Michelle13]

Really great shots! Mum must be pleased! I suspect you could print these quite large before you started to see noise in the print - I always find it's MUCH more noticable on screen than on paper; I just had a 30x20 inch print of a photo that on screen I could clearly see some noise (though it wasn't terribly strong, or objectionable) and I can't see any in the print at all even with my face right up against it.

If you can't afford the fullblown Photoshop CS then considder Photoshop Elements; i've been using it for at least 10 years and it's always performed well. It got a HUGE upgrade with version 9 (think it was 9 - Im sure someone will kindly correct me if it as 8 or 10) when they added layer masks, which for my use was the only thing really tempting me to upgrade to CS.

Some poeple find lightroom to be hugely useful, and while it is great for adding whole-photo processing to large numbers of photos, I find that I tend to take few and work on an even smaller number of photos, but then like to spend a long time editing them to get them exactly how I want them, so I hardly ever use lightroom at all - I tend to just pull them straight into Elements unless I need to make a fix that Elements can't do in one button click, but Lightroom can, like removing purple fringing etc.

Thank you for the information! I think I probably will end up getting PS elements pretty soon. I've read so much about it, it seems perfect for what I want to do. Also I think it is my monitor on my computer making me think they have a lot of noise. I just got a new monitor and its so big and wonderful haha. Ill have to print a couple and see how they look.

 

[Michelle13]

Great stuff, well shot.

I would only suggest not to do ALL of your baby photos from a looking down perspective. Get down on their level and shoot them lower, it looks more interesting in your second image with cake on the face because people don't see babies and small children from that angle. Especially with the numbers, a little further down would've worked well!

Thank you for the advice. I will definitely have to remember to get on her level more next I do a shoot with her, hopefully soon! I also have to remember to stop turning the camera diagonally, horrible habit of mine, when I was looking through all the pictures it was hard to find good one that were straight on.

 

[GrahamPhisher]

first baby pics that made me smile, even my own baby pics don't make me smile, but we'll discuss that later...

but nah, i really like the concept in the second one where s/he's holding the letters, and I really like the expression caught in the third picture. these all seem like those pics you see as placeholders in frame stores.