It's been a very busy few weeks recently and we've ended up with our very own baby knocking around the house! He's a bit of a superstar (despite the sleep deprivation) and also gives me a chance to hone my baby portrait skills without having to borrow a child from anyone else.
I made a mini-studio from some clean white towels and a cushion and waited until he was washed, fed and generally chilled out. I really didn't want a wiggling and grumpy baby to try and photograph, we still had a pretty wiggly one but at least he was in a good mood.
At only four and a half weeks he's not holding his head up yet so I'm going to try later with a sitting-up picture. I do like the pictures of him being held, he has a relaxed expression.
I haven't done a great deal to these pictures, taking out a bit of saturation made his skin look somehow more natural and black and white often looks good for portraits.
He was very good while we took these, in some ways taking similar shots in a few months (which I hope to) will be more challenging because he will be a LOT more mobile and potentially a lot more stroppy as well:)
I'm using the trusty 50mm Minolta f1.7......for the most part and popped on the Sigma 24-70 EX DG...
...for some of the others. I'm really enjoying using the 50mm at the moment and it's fantastic for portraits and indoor work.
In fact, we found that with the flash and sun streaming in, the 50mm was so bright that it was very hard to avoid over-exposing the pictures and continue using the widest aperture. I knocked the iso down to 100 but I didn't want to lose the tight focal plane I had so a few came out a bit bright. Shooting in raw gives you a bit more leeway with exposure though so a quick tweak in lightroom fixed them.
This is one of my favourites from a previous evening, I had the camera remote in the other hand and the poor boy had to put up with being balanced for several shots. After several attempts to frame the shot by guess work I could appreciate why people like live-view on their camera!
In fact, we found that with the flash and sun streaming in, the 50mm was so bright that it was very hard to avoid over-exposing the pictures and continue using the widest aperture. I knocked the iso down to 100 but I didn't want to lose the tight focal plane I had so a few came out a bit bright. Shooting in raw gives you a bit more leeway with exposure though so a quick tweak in lightroom fixed them.
This is one of my favourites from a previous evening, I had the camera remote in the other hand and the poor boy had to put up with being balanced for several shots. After several attempts to frame the shot by guess work I could appreciate why people like live-view on their camera!
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