Niki @ five days old

urbanaries

Newborn shoots have been so challenging for me lately, I have been close to tears myself! (to the point of considering a minimum age of six months!:rofl) This is about my tenth one and I finally feel like I got some good shots, but I'm not great at getting even natural light and my PP needs some work.

(None of these are retouched, I will wait to eradicate the flaky skin when I see what they order...poor little thing!)

1.


2. I am still fiddling with the conversion on this one....


3. Do shadows look too crushed?



4.


5.

TroubleLovesMe

These are all great. Don't change them, the flaky skin is part of being a newborn. If you're going to do that you might as well take an inch off his waist and digitally replace the imbilical cord with a belly button.:D

Seneca

Ahhh these are sooo darn cute. Love'em all. You've covered different colors, Sepia, B&W & color...great job.

urbanaries

TroubleLovesMe wrote:

These are all great. Don't change them, the flaky skin is part of being a newborn. If you're going to do that you might as well take an inch off his waist and digitally replace the imbilical cord with a belly button.:D

Good point! You wouldn't believe though, I get more requests for retouching from newborn moms than brides....they don't like the baby acne, jaundice color or flaky skin....go figure!

wesleyt

Lynne,

I love #2 and #4. Great job with the set!

Regards,
Wes

urbanaries

Seneca wrote:

Ahhh these are sooo darn cute. Love'em all. You've covered different colors, Sepia, B&W & color...great job.

Thanks, seneca! I know you would be straight with me, if you didn't like them!

jeffreaux2

Beautiful!! I love the feet, but all of them are super. Have you experimented with the LAB colorspace for BW conversion yet?

jeffreaux2

You are holding out on us!!! I checked your proofs galleries. No wonder mommy is gushing. 25,27,28...........very very good.

urbanaries

jeffreaux2 wrote:

You are holding out on us!!! I checked your proofs galleries. No wonder mommy is gushing. 25,27,28...........very very good.

thanks jeffreaux...didn't want to overkill y'all on the baby shots! I think 2 is my favorite, just wish the blanket wasn't hiding her chin.

I don't know anything about LAB colorspace....nada....zip. Care to enlighten me on the process/benefits?

jeffreaux2

urbanaries wrote:

I don't know anything about LAB colorspace....nada....zip. Care to enlighten me on the process/benefits?

I don't know anything about LAB colorspace either. I only stay there long enough to convert, then go back to RGB. Benifits? Maybe none, but I have been playing around with it awhile and I like the look. I can only describe it as soft, creamy, delicate looking.....at least to me. It doesn't look great in every situation, but generally works very well on skin tones and lighter colors. I mentioned it because some of these photos look like good candidates.

After any minor levels adjustments or whatever is needed for the color image......

I begin by duplicating the rgb image then goto image, mode, select and click LAB. You are now in LAB mode. Next I go to the channels palatte, it is the tab next to the layers tab in the layers palatte window. There will be 4 channels....LAB, lightness,A,and B. Click on lightness for a sneak peek. If the highlights seem blown here, you may need to start over with the color file and do a ahadows highlights adjust to give the highlights a tad more detail. If all looks well, then right click and delete the A channel. Now it changes the remaining 2 channels to alpha 1 and 2. Right click and delete alpha 2. Nearly done. Now go back to image, mode, and choose greyscale. Then image, mode, RGB Color. Lastly, now that it is again an RGB Color image, I go to the photo filters and use a warming filter or two to warm it up a bit. Image, adjustments, photo filter.......I use the warming filters 85 or 81 or sepia usually at no more than 7%.

Is this the best method? Right? Wrong?....sheesh I dunno, but the results are pretty good on the right image. I find that it doesn't muddy up the mid tones as badly as other conversions.

Good luck!!!

saurora

urbanaries wrote:

Good point! You wouldn't believe though, I get more requests for retouching from newborn moms than brides....they don't like the baby acne, jaundice color or flaky skin....go figure!

Awesome shots, Lynne! I checked your gallery out, too. You took some neat shots of the Mom and baby and little brother. I'd be really pleased to have these if I were the family. It surprises me that so many people are bothered by the flaky skin...probably first-time parents!

gluwater

These are great Lynn. I really like the second. Did you use the 17-55 for these?

Scott_Quier

Lynne,

I visited your web site to get a look at all of them you have posted. They are ALL very, very nice and I know your client is going to gush all over you about them. We are all our own worst critic (I hate many of my photographs, others seem to like them - don't know why :-) ) - so lighten up on yourself. These are wonderful.

Number 1 and 4 posted here just simply blow me away. Love the sepia toning you've done with the first and the detail of the feet in the second is wonderful.

I'm with Nick wondering which len(es) you used to make these photographs. Your 17-55? (I'm betting the honeymoon isn't over yet!).

urbanaries

Scott_Quier wrote:

Lynne,

I visited your web site to get a look at all of them you have posted. They are ALL very, very nice and I know your client is going to gush all over you about them. We are all our own worst critic (I hate many of my photographs, others seem to like them - don't know why :-) ) - so lighten up on yourself. These are wonderful.

Number 1 and 4 posted here just simply blow me away. Love the sepia toning you've done with the first and the detail of the feet in the second is wonderful.

I'm with Nick wondering which len(es) you used to make these photographs. Your 17-55? (I'm betting the honeymoon isn't over yet!).

gushing all over me...that sounds messy!

thanks Scott, Saurora and gluwater for your comments! Yep this was exclusively with the 17-55, I didn't even get other lenses out of the car! I never use flash for newborns, its too cruel to their eyes, so the IS made a huge difference. I obtained threefold more sharp and properly exposed shots than ever before. In the past I've used the 50 1.8 but in tight home spaces it can be very restrictive, the zoom was more versatile and focuses very close.