Not long ago I photographed my first maternity session for friends of mine. Not long after (about a week) Miss A was born. I had the opportunity to meet her today and photograph her and her family on the outside.
Here are a few of the first photos.
I’m looking forward to getting to have a look at the rest!
I was going through my photos the other day. I had such a back log it was ridiculous. I discovered what I think is a bit of a gem amongst them. Its actually taken by my anaesthetist! With a bit of cropping and editing I think it turned out fairly well!
So here is my husband and I meeting our newest addition for the first time in the operating theatre! I think its a great photo. What do you think?
Thanks Anaesthetist!…boy, the things we do for our blog.
You are still in the right place! I have been rethinking my blog. It seems to be predominately about photography now as I become more obsessed at getting better at this. So I have renamed my blog to suit and given it a facelift. I have also decided to start a facebook page to relieve my personal facebook friends from having to see the many photos I post on facebook!
You can find me here:
https://www.facebook.com/Stillphotographybykimclements
Here is Baby E helping me to practise a new skill. I have been wondering how to photograph babies in a studio setup without having a studio. A sheet on the floor worked quite nicely.
Waking up takes a while.
How is this layers? Editing. Think photoshop. They don’t come out of the camera looking quite like this.
I took these because I lost my mojo. Do you ever have periods where you think you’ve lost your photography mojo? I am obsessed with focus. I have been taking lots of indoor photos with not enough light and no good flash. It has been getting me down. I found a lot of photos that were rubbish. I have finally had an opportunity to get outside and take a few photos and experiment with window light. Unfortunately taking photos of a 4 year old is HARD. The sideways head was the best I could do. Hmmm…
He’s a natural. Little W can make a stage from anything and knows how to create drama.
FYI He’s rocking out to the Small Potatoes.
Friends of mine are expecting a new arrival…very…soon. Unfortunately they were unable to organise the photographer who they used to take the maternity photos for them of their first child. So I offered to take a few shots for them. I have never photographed anyone other than my kids who are used to Mum chasing them around while they try to hide from me. I was a bit nervous that I would take a million photos and get nothing good enough for them to use. I am happy to say that I think some of them worked out quite well despite battling the light and I have learned that you need to pre-scout for a good location. All in all it was a great learning experience which I enjoyed thoroughly and I hope that I was able to help out my friends.
Here are a few of the results of my first ever maternity/family photo shoot. I have loved trying to capture the personalities and the emotion.
I have been taking some newborn photos. I have never had the opportunity to do any newborn photography and obviously with my own brand spanking new newborn it was the perfect opportunity to have a go at it. I haven’t mastered the setup and shoot thing yet. I don’t have the right lighting and my attempts at a background went horribly wrong, although it was a good lesson in shadow and light.
What I did have the chance to explore was whether I can make the manual settings on my camera work for me as opposed to the auto setting. I took a couple of shots with the settings on auto (mainly to make sure I didn’t end up with nothing at the end of the session) then I switched on to the manual settings. I much preferred the results on manual settings. They were lighter and cleaner. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed in editing shooting in RAW, but it saved me the hassle.
Original auto settings.
Original image with manual settings.
Then I wondered if editing was really necessary. Again, I think the results after I altered the image slightly were noticably better. I cropped the image to focus on the subject, lightened the face as it was slightly darker, removed blotchiness and reduced the redness in the skin.
I am happy with my first efforts at newborn photography. I am sure it could be improved, but its still going on the wall. Much repect to the talented people who get the newborns to sleep and in position for photographing! It would take me a lot of time and practise before I felt confident enough to shoot anyone else’s baby.
Learning the Light 