Sweet, Sweet Baby Girl

What a precious little girl I had the honor of photographing last week! She is just 3 months old and was SO good for the shoot. She seemed to really like the camera (and the fact that my little helper, Lily, was behind me holding up bright colored toys and smiling at her)! 

I learned a lot from this shoot. The baby was a perfect little model and allowed us to move her around and position her all sorts of ways. It was good to play around with the set up, especially in babies that are a bit older and move around.

 

That brings us to lighting. I absolutely prefer natural lighting and we worked with what we had, but I did end up using my flash (just the pop-up on my camera with a diffuser) for many of the shots. After this shoot, I came home and ordered my off camera flash. I don't think it will arrive soon enough! :) My colors are very different from one pic to the next due to the changes in lighting, so it has made editing a bit of a nightmare, especially since I have been trying to maintain some consistency in the color from picture to picture. I converted a number of them to B&W and that helped, but doesn't solve the problem. Guess that's why they call it a learning experience! :) 

I also used this as an opportunity to really sharpen up my photoshop skills. I wanted to make baby's skin silky smooth - dreamy. So after spot healing little blemishes, I smoothed out her skin using an action in the Florabella Retouch and Makeover action pack called Natural Skin Smoother. It worked amazingly and I am personally very happy with how these pics are turning out.

Which one do you like better - full color or just a pop of color? I really like them both. :)

Thank-you again to this sweet baby's Mommy for letting me "play" with her! We had fun - let's do it again sometime... :)