So when we moved into the house Brandy and I live in, we seemed to be right on "young couple row". Walking around the rest of the neighborhood or at least our area of it, I'm glad we're at where we're at. One of the first couples we met was MJ and Jason who invited us over for a Christmas Party they were having. And if you're from the DC area you know how hard it is to meet nice people let alone be invited over to their house, so of course we were more than happy to come over and play some games (which ended up being a hellacious game of Monopoly if my memory serves me right). Either way, MJ was pregnant at the time with their first son. I had no idea a few months later I'd be doing his baby pictures. When Brandy and I finally decided to start this business and MJ had Lil' Jason we'd considered asking if she wanted baby pictures but didn't want her to feel pressured to do so since we were neighbors. When I was doing the "brick shoot" with Brandy and Torri, I ran into her while I had my camera, she was apparently unaware until then that I did photography and she mentioned she needed to take Lil' Jason into Sears to get photos done.... SEARS?!? No, no, no.... we're neighbors. I'll do his photos if you would like, no charge just save him the badly painted backgrounds and silly plastic props.
So here we are doing his photos. We wanted to take him outside and take some shots in the yard, but unfortunately right as Brandy and I made our way over it started POURING and that put a stop to our outing to the playground. Eventually we'll get back together with the whole family and their beautiful Black Lab mix Dyna and take some family shots, but until then it's all about Lil' Jason and Momma. When we arrived he was actually asleep so what a better way to take some shots and make sure my lighting and settings were good for indoor rather than outdoor. We tried to lay him in a basket to get a couple more sleeping photos but not very long after MJ put him down he woke up and the fun began. He cried for a bit but sucking on MJ's finger quieted him down and after I took two or three shots he was suddenly mesmorized by the camera flash. Even if I couldn't get him to look at the camera if I snapped the shutter once, the second photo would be perfect because he would instantly turn his attention to the flash. We changed outfits a few times and took him to his crib where his blanket and his teddy bear were and he just smiled and laughed and drooled and all the cute stuff babies do. The only thing he didn't really enjoy was when we tried to take some shots of him on his belly. He isn't quite crawling yet so he was getting a little frustrated trying to get himself up, but other than that, he was a natural!
Some of our favorites were in this little fold-out tub he has. As soon as MJ got it filled up and sat him down in the water he kind of lounged back into it and put his arms up like a pro athlete in the locker room hot tub. Quite the site and the first photo that I decided to edit because it was just too cute. Many years down the road I'm sure MJ will be showing these little naked tub pictures to a girlfriend of his for the sole purpose of embarassement just like all moms do.... no? Was that just my mom? *sigh*
There weren't any new techniques I learned in this shoot. Just some burning and dodging. Baby's look great in black and white but I tried to keep enough color ones I liked to make sure the shoot didn't end up being too bland and boring. Color spotting is a great way of adding color to a black and white photograph, but you have to be careful of what you're colorspotting. Make sure it's something that either frames or compliments the subject. If you color spot just the subject themselves, you tend to lose the background and it looks like they're just stuck on the photo instead of being a cohesive part of it. If you have a girl in a dress standing in a background... instead of colorspotting the girl, try color spotting JUST her dress. This is also a good way of changing focus to another subject... Take the same picture of a girl standing in the background and in the foreground there's a flower on the ground. Your eye wants to go to the girl, but if you change it to black and white but color spot the flower your focus is change to the flower but doesn't LOSE sight of the girl like if you were to soft focus around the flower. Just some thoughts.
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