I wanted to do a separate post for anyone out there wanting to see some behind the scenes action that they may not have seen this from Ethan’s blog post, and important enough that I thought I would include again.

So I am a lover of light, and it has to fall correctly on baby or else it can look dark and mysterious. Don’t get me wrong, I love playing with shadows to enhance a mood or emotion, which you can see with Ethan and Mommy in BW in his nursery from my last post, but to me a posed newborn session should be pure, simple, and timeless, which I feel requires even, soft light. Take a look at these two pics… almost the same {apart from a slightly different angle}, but you can see some shadows on Ethan’s face in the photo on the left. Silly me setup the beanbag for his head to always be to my right since he had a little knot on his noodle from birth, and then my brain forgot and setup the cushioning for him laying left. {face palm to head} He was finally perfectly posed, but stirring, and I didn’t want to move and reposition to fix the shadows and risk losing his sleepiness. Soooooo… what did I do?? LIGHTBULB! Find something to use as a reflector to add fill light where the shadows are!  So, I had dad hold up a white swaddling blanket to bounce the light off of and boom, shadows aren’t as harsh on Ethan’s face.  The resulting picture is on the right. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you need more light and you cannot move yourself or the subject, just grab anything white or metallic to help. I will try to find some more examples but you can see my edit of the two below and the pullback shot:

SOOC — Fixed Blanket and Smoothed his Knot in Photoshop — My Newbown Edit

This is by no means the only way to fix, but was the best solution for me at the time.  One thing I know is if I don’t like it in the camera, I can’t “fix” that in photoshop.  I can fix it while there and save time later.

Hope that helps if you ever find yourself in a less than desireable shadow situation 🙂

Smooches,

<3 Kristin