First Baby Shoot - C & C Please

[dviv]

Did my first baby shoot last night. Wouldn love some pointers on how to improve these.

Thanks!





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[Killakoala]

I love the last one The expression and gesture are priceless. However the shadow across the top is unfortunate and the monogram is a little distracting, but a clone tool will fix that.

[dviv]

Thanks Steve,

I'll give that a go. Unfortunately the shadow was me blocking the flash

[Ladybird]

I'm crap at portraits myself but here are some things that IMHO would improve these....

I like the expression on the bub and the mum in the first. However, it and the second would work better with a different background colour as it is too close to the colour of the hair and even the skin. Basically, it blends in too much. Also, I find the white of the jumpsuit a bit harsh.

In the 3rd, the white in the bottom corner and also the seam in the backdrop above the head distract me.

Hope that's not too harsh. Kids are such characters at this age, the best bet is to hang around for a few hours while they are wide awake and snap away.

[chrisk]

i love the expressions you got !! in the blue outfit is a really sweet photo. mums expression in the first is beautiful too !

i think the thing that will improve your portraits immensely is framing. theres a couple of cut off elbows, arms and fingers. trying to make sure all your subject is in the frame is imo the most important thing i learnt when doing portraits. it especially adds balance to the photo when there are equal distances on the sides of the frame. (or when you use the rule of thirds aswell).

the most tempting thing to do is to zoom right in, i found it worked better for me at the beggining to make sure i left plenty of crop room and then frame the shot with cropping in PP.

[shakey]

Improve the backgrounds is my suggestion. The first two have the home curtains in the BG. A flatter less obvious BG would be less distracting. In the third shot there is a join or seam of some sort in the BG cutting through the top of the babies head. You could clone that out but it would have been better to have the baby at a greater distance from the BG so the join was blurred out by shallow DOF.

Lovely expression on the mother's face in 1st. You've captured her joy very well..

[dviv]

Thanks for the tips guys. Much appreciated - especially about the framing - I think you're right about me trying to zoom in too much.

I am starting to realise more and more that for really good portraits the background is really, really important. It's surprisingly hard to find a decent background in your average house

I would love to do an organised shoot with those two as mum and bub are both happy people and always smiling. Last night we were at their place for dinner and I had the camera there so it wasn't planned or anything.