Welcome Carlyn!

Last week, my friends Branden and Laura asked me to photograph them and their new baby Carlyn.  I was more than pleased to since I also photographed their maternity shots late last year.  Since this was my first baby shoot, I decided to do some extended planning.  I researched articles for tips on photographing babies and children.  I looked through Flickr for creative ideas on how to photograph this new little person.  And I also made sure to make a list of shots I definitely wanted to get along with a list of optional shots if we had the time and whether Carlyn was up for it.

I shot both a mixture of natural light shots and off-camera flash shots in both the nursery and Branden and Laura’s bedroom.  Both rooms had nice large windows letting in diffused light from the overcast day.  Situating them near the window along with my new Lastolite trigrip reflector, I snapped away.  For my shots using flash, I used my LumoPro LP160 speedlight with a shoot-through umbrella.  This, combined with my reflector gave me some great looking shots too.  Ultimately, I was most pleased with the natural lit shots.

Carlyn was a little peach the whole time I was there.  She was calm and alert and wasn’t bothered by me, my camera or my flash.  She fell asleep towards the end of the shoot and that’s when I was able to get some nice close up shots of her sleeping calmly.

I love the look of low key baby shots and was hoping to get some of those.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough space to really allow for such a shot.  In the future, I hope to set up some sort of small studio for those kinds of shots.

Related posts:

1. Maternity Shoot with Branden and Laura
2. On Assignment: Glymont Animal Hospital