I am very fond of this set of newbie photos. A combination of great natural light from San Francisco style bay windows and a very cooperative, beautiful baby boy. I added some supplemental light using a reflector - I have a fancy reflector, but you can easily use a sheet of white card or foam board, card board covered in foil - placed to the side of the baby (right, left left respectively) so that the window light reflected back and filled in some of the shadow. I don't like to use flash on the very little ones, so given enough window light, this method works well in the place of flash. These pics also show the use of parent hands in newbie pics, the lovely backgrounds that textured white blankets make, and the vignetting potential of blankets.
If you happen to be looking for Japanese Birth or Wedding Announcements, check out my client's fledgling card design business:
I taught my first Natural Light Photography of Babies and Kids with your DSLR workshop this morning, with 3 students (moms). I'd spent the past week putting it together - first a detailed draft of what I wanted to cover, then compiled photos to illustrate my points, next made a streamlined, condensed set of teaching notes to correlate with slides, and finally a student hand out with the most important points. It reminded me very much of putting together a grad school presentation, and I was glad to have that experience (though at the time of MFA, I grumbled and stressed out about having to do so many). And it was nice to have such an attentive, interested and sanitary audience, unlike the jaded, slack-jawed art undergrads or roly poly, leaky-nosed 5 year olds - from my live bug teaching days.
The class is pretty specific. "Natural Light" does not include artificial/studio light, in which I dabble but do not consider myself an expert. "Babies and Kids" are different subjects from adults, and completely different from sport, wildlife, landscape, architectural, product, food and fashion etc photography, in none of which I have expertise either. It's not an unusual assumption by random people (like my clinic's phlebotomist) that I should (a) take interest in and (b) know how to do all those other types of photography.
Anyways, I realized, in the area of Natural Light Baby /Kid Photography I know quite a lot! And felt very comfortable in sharing my experience and accumulated information. There is some demand for a web version, as I have many friends with babies and DSLRs Not In San Francisco. We'll see about that.
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