Fortunately I seem to be at that age when my friends are producing babies like they are going out of fashion. I had noticed an ex work colleague (Kate) and her husband (Chris) were due to have a baby, and had asked her if she would mind if I popped over and took a few shots when the baby arrived. Kate got in touch a week or so ago and said young Tom had joined us in the world, so on sunday I popped over to North London (always a big thing us Southerners going across the river) to visit their home.
Little Tom holding Kate's finger
I felt much more prepared for this visit than the wedding I had described a couple of weeks ago. I had been doing quite a lot of background reading on new baby shoots. One thing that did strike me, particularly on-line is the debate raging over whether it is safe to use flash photography with new borns. Like the issues of real versus disposable nappies, there seems to be a real ‘marmite’ mentality. People are even for or against, with strong opinions on both sides. On the one side there seems to be photographers who claim that there is no damage, and that those who make the claim that they only use natural light do so because they don’t know how to use, or don’t have studio flash. On the other are photographers who suggest that having a strong light thrown into a babies eyes will do them no good whatsoever. More revealing to me was the fact that I couldn’t really find any scientific argument to back up either view. What it does seem to leave, is a group of really confused parents in the middle who want great pictures of their child, but obviously one who is left undamaged from the process.
Tom's tiny fingers
As it was my first shoot, and given that I was still unconvinced on either side of the issue I thought it better to go down the a middle ground. I decided to use natural light where possible, and take an on camera flash as back up, but with the expectation that I would use it indirectly. I spent some time in advance of the shoot looking at images I thought were strong on the internet and saving them as resource material. It helped me in deciding on a list of images that I would like to capture when photographing little Tom, and also in posing the parents with him. I guess the key concept was to ensure I concentrated on showing how small he was compared with his parents. Of course, he can only grow, and will never be this small again. I think also, with a newborn, they can’t actually do much in terms of expressions and movement (although Tom was giving some cute smiles and waves), so it is the size differential which is the real strong point of emphasis at this age. In addition I had suggested to Kate that she made sure Tom was only wearing loose fitting clothes so that they did mark just in case they wanted any skin shots.
His little feet
In terms of equipment I used my 50mm 1.8 lens to get some real close ups of his hands and feet blurring the background out, and also my 24-70mm 2.8 for slightly wider shots and for when I was including the parents. I also took my black screen for the parent shots and my lastolite baby poser for the getting Tom on his own. I had gone and bought some netting to soften the image of the baby poser, and Lou had suggested using a baby blanket to both keep the baby warm and act as a barrier for any toilet or sick that may have been produced. As it turned out the blanket was a great idea in terms of the texture it produces in the image, and fortunately as Tom was so well behaved, was not needed for any by-product advantages !!!. I also took over my light meter to make sure everything balanced nicely.
Eye to eye with dad Chris
The drive over to Kate and Chris took a little longer than expected. Lou and I had agreed not to do any valentines gifts this year as it was difficult to plan with the baby potentially only days away. However, I had bought a baking tin for cooking heart shaped cookies, and needed some raspberries and white chocolate to knock up Lou’s favourite flavour treats in the morning (they didn’t turn out too badly, even if I say so myself. I had also bought some icing so that I could write messages on them). What with my romantic stop off, and some heavy East End traffic, it took me over two hours just to cross London.
Comforting mother
The actual shoot was in two parts. First we put a little sleeping Tom in the baby poser. Kate did comment how he seemed to enjoy it for comfort. The day was very overcast but Kate has a big living room window, so I set Tom at a 45 degree angle to it and took mainly natural light photos. Opening right up to 2.8 on aperture and a quite high ISO along with Tom being asleep, meant that I didn’t have to have a particularly fast shutter speed. Using the poser was also a nice introduction to setting gear up, before trying the more space using black screen.
We then took a few of Tom in his baby bouncer, before eventually getting the parents involved with some shots in front of the black Lastolite collapsible screen. Again Lou had come to my aid on this a bit. The stand has to go up quite high, and not being very tall I had struggled to reach to put it up. A simple solution, but only seen by a set of fresh eyes. The structure is very light, so assemble the stand with it laying on the floor, and then put the background on it, before lifting it up. It made it so much easier. With the parents I tried using a little more bounce flash, trying both the ceiling and the walls for a bounce source. I had a few ideas of the poses I wanted to try, but was very much led by the parents in terms of what felt natural for them.
Future in his hands
In the end I think we were all quite happy with the results but do let me know what you think.
Family shot
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