Learning A New Trade...

As you may know, if you've ever been ot my photography website (click here to see it. There's also a link on the left side of my blog) you would know that I focus on still life and landscape photography.
I have always admired people who can photograph people and babies, like Kelley Cook who did Avery's newborn and 6th month photos. It has always seemed too daunting and difficult in so many ways that I just never really gave it a shot.

Since my neice Ella was born this month, I thought it would be fun to give it a shot to see what I could come up with. Luckily, my sister was happy to let her be a model for as many photos as Ella would cooperate for. :)

I have to say that it was just about as hard as I expected. Because I am used to still life and landscapes I do not have to work nearly as fast as I do with a baby!! There were a few issues that I ran into:

1. Emily and I had our other two little ones running around while I was trying to take pictures. BAD idea! haha. Avery is abnormally curious of other babies and has to be right on top of them! Annie is almost 2 so she was running around and knocked over the backdrop a few times and would walk between the camera and ella. She obviously didn't realize what was going on but it would have been nice to have someone there to take those 2 in another room.

2. I obviously do not know my camera as well as I thought. By the time I would get the settings figured out how I wanted them, the scene set, and then Ella into position, something would go wrong and I would have to change my camera settings, background, lighting... you name it. I would get so flustered and ended up working up a sweat from trying to get everything to coordinate. I guess it just takes experience and doing it over and over to learn some tricks; I ovbiously know the basics but I really need to dig into my camera to learn more about it. Right now, it is WAY over my head.

3. Skin tones are the hardest thing for me to get looking right!!! I can't say that enough. I really want to look into getting some filters for my camera that can help in that area. Photoshop is good, but isnt the same.

4. Photoshop... I need help there, too. Kelley was able to help me a little on one of the photos. She was kind enough to give me a few pointers, but I really can't live up to her standards! lol

All in all, I ended up with a few pictures that turned out ok. They are not wonderful, but they are a start. I doubt I will ever do this professionally since it is not my forte, but it can be a useful trade to know since I plan to have more kids in the future. I hope to be able to take great photos of kids and people on a regular basis of every day things, too.

Here's a few of my favorites: