Last week I had the pleasure of doing a shoot for Richard and Ange who wanted some shots of their 8 month old daughter, Pippa.  I spent around 3 hours with the family, 2 hours for the main shoot including bath time, 30 minutes for her eventually to fall asleep and a quick 30 minute shoot once she was asleep.


I’d already been around to the house and because the ceilings weren’t too high and the predominant colour was white, I knew I would be able to effectively bounce light from the majority of surfaces and minimise the amount of equipment I had to take.  A couple of flash guns, a 60mm F2.8, 10-22mm and of course the camera body.  Their house was fantastic, a beautiful environment with lots of space which made the shoot much easier.


I started with the 60mm first of all as Pippa was getting used to me crawling around on the floor with her.  It gave me the opportunity to move around and spy on her from across the room as she interacted with her parents and her toys.  I was able to capture some great shots, with looks of excitement as some of her favourite toys came into play.






As she got used to me and started to come and investigate, it was time to switch to the 10-22mm, giving me a much closer subject to photograph.  

Tip: I was shooting manually throughout the entire session, remember that as you move around a room, even though it’s the same room, the light will adjust, with changes to flash direction etc, so make sure you check every 2-3 pictures what is coming out on the LCD. If you move, check immediately with a test shot.


The perfect lens for when a little one is constantly trying to get closer to you… the one thing you have to make sure you do, is always try to keep the lens level with the horizon at 10mm as this helps to reduce the distortion.


We moved up to Mum and Dad’s bedroom and another perfect room, all white with white sheets on the bed.  We did quite a few shots with Pippa crawling around on the bed.  In these images I was really pumping out the light on the walls and ceiling so that I could really blow out the back, this combined with Pippa constantly trying to grab my camera was hilarious, chasing me as I moved around the end of the bed, a little cutie.  The reaching for the camera finally resulted in the shot below, one of my personal favourites from the shoot… 

As we moved through the shots on the bed, I eventually pulled the covers over the top of the head board and used this for the background, making it very easy to completely blow out the background of the shot, resulting images like the one below…


Pippa and I had built a great rapport and she was really playing to the camera and it was making it so easy to get fantastic shots, it went perfectly.  As we know, photographing children goes one of two ways, either very well… or very very badly… We put her on the floor and proceeded to let her make her way around the room, using reflections from the mirrored wall in the bathroom to capture some great images with one of her favourite teddies.



Then it was bath time and we got some great shots, The wide angle lens with the camera hovering over the water.  I was definitely happy to have a weather sealed body to my camera, because Pippa does like to splash around.


After the bath, it was bedtime, there were a few tears because we’d been having so much fun and I think that Pippa really wanted to stay up as long as possible, but once she had gone to sleep, I was able to sneak into her room and get some great shots of her sleeping.





I processed the shots when I got home and was able to have them online for Richard and Ange to review in the morning. They were over the moon with the results and that always feels good.  Ultimately, photography is always for someone else, when you get the result you want and a reaction of exhilaration from the people you have done the photography for, you know you have hit the mark…


Tip: Babies don’t understand many words, but the words that they do understand they have learnt from Mum and Dad, it may be cute names for the little one, a small set of repeated phrases, use these words to create a feeling of immediate familiarity… more importantly, before a baby knows any words, pretty much as soon as it comes out of the womb, he/she can recognise a smile… make sure you are smiling lots and use the camera for a game of “peek a boo”… if you hide behind the camera all the time, the little one won’t have the chance to establish that you are a friendly face.


More blog articles to come… check back again soon… 

You can see more of my images on my main site…

TTFN
Paul Stoakes
Main Site: www.eyeforimages.com