Baby Charlotte

I had a fun photoshoot on Tuesday night with an extremely cute (and small) model.  Baby Charlotte, all of 14 days old, was to have her first “official” photoshoot, having been already snapped regularly over the previous two weeks by her mother BethAnne, a friend of mine and fellow photographer and member of Dublin Camera Club.  BethAnne had seen a photograph that she liked, and wanted us to try to get a similar shot.  The only problem was that the pose would require Charlotte’s father Fjon to hold Charlotte a little bit above his head, which might not be a big deal if she was wearing a nappy.  But given that the shot called for her to be in the nip, being beneath a bare bottom of a 14 day old baby carried with it some, well, risks.

I chuckled to myself when BethAnne produced a protective cover for the floor – which, of course, would keep the floor dry should Charlotte decide to pee (or worse) as we took this particular photo, but not do much for Fjon! As it turned out, not only did Fjon need to hold her up that high (the power of Photoshop to the rescue), but Charlotte didn’t need to pee or poo, and so the set and Fjon both stayed dry.

Speaking of the set, I kept things about as simple as I could, and when photographing a baby this age, simple is good. I had a 4 foot wide roll of black paper which I hung from a portable backdrop in the sizeable livingroom of BethAnne and Fjon’s apartment, and our impromptu studio was in front of that.  Lighting was simply a single flash, fired through a 24″ x 24″ softbox.  Easy, relatively flattering, and soft light.

The shoot was going to present enough challenges – not just pee and poo related ones – without me making the lighting challenging too, and with the space available in the apartment I could do a nice shot against black with just a single light.  Those challenges it did present all derived from two things – the age of the subject, and how awake she was.  If she was a little older, or a little more sleepy, we’d have had an easier time photographing her, but with her being so young and so awake she was all arms and legs and movement, and the biggest challenge of all was keeping the right bits in focus.

I cheated a little for the shot above and settled on Fjon’s hands as a focus point, but to my eye the image is all about the size of her relative to his hands, and it helps that her right arm falls along the same plane as his hands at that instant, and so is in focus too.

In case you think we tortured poor Charlotte for the shot above, I promise we didn’t!  She was safe and secure at all times, and having got literally a handful of frames, we moved on to more traditional shots.  My favourite is probably this one of Mum, Dad and baby having a cuddle.  While I did suggest they stand together, the pose here is all natural – new parents doing what new parents will do, and looking lovingly at their bundle of joy.  Thankfully I managed to capture that:

Again, that one softbox, at camera left. ISO 200, f/4, 1/250th of a second, 1/32 power on an SB-800. Easy.