Baby Portraits

[Rocco]

Rocco, those are some fabulous little shots and mommy I sure is going to be quite happy.



I thought of the same thing until I was forced to use it on a mother-to-be's photos. I know it is very cliche' but that's what she wanted. She is now wanting me to shoot the newborn but that's a whole new bag of worms. To go along with what Sean has said, I have also seen the recent craze on post processing on newborn shoots and will try to find an example. One that made me laugh was when they were trying to make the baby's head stay perched on his little hands. One picture the lady was holding the hands and the next she was holding the head straight. Post process was to cut the pictures in half and splice them together to have the perfect pose.

Sigh.. My brother had his first baby the night before last. His wife will simply DIE if she doesn't get selective coloring of her baby in a picnic basket, on a pumpkin, etc. Of course I'm their first and only choice. An honor, right? RIGHT?! They're lucky I love them.

[Sean Setters]

I have an acquaintance who's interested in photography and purchased her first DSLR. She recently did a maternity shoot for a friend of hers. When she saw me the other day, she asked if I know how to "...make everything go black and white, except for one part of the image??" I tried to explain to her how the technique was done. However, after not making any real progress, I told her to email me a few shots and I'd apply the process to the best one (which is exactly what I did). Her technique for capturing the maternity images:

a) Put bow around stomach.
b) Place subject 2 feet from blank wall.
c) Put camera in "P" mode.
d) Use pop-up flash.

I think the time I spent in Photoshop eclipsed her session time.

[Steve U]

Great set of portraits Rocco, congrats well done.
As far as B&W's, selective colours or whatever processing techniques you use, it gets down to what you like how often you do it and most importantly what the client likes.
I'll include the most requested print from a wedding I shot last year, girlfriends, mothers and the boys who all got together again after about 15 years all want this image, they are not interested in the unprocessed version. So what do you do??
[img]
The boys by Steve's Life, on Flickr[/img]