Light and Sweet
Can you believe I have no words for you today? Ha! I’m sure they will come. I’ve never been short on words. I wanted to post more images of the family shoot I did last week. This session was split into two parts. Part one was in the master bedroom, as you’ve already seen in the Family Feet post. Part two was in the baby nursery (immediately following the Family Feet session!), where we were able to really have some fun and get some creative shots! This was the first time I was glad I overpacked my camera bag for the shoot. I brought my 50mm, which was my primary lens as it opens to 1.4. I brought my 60 mm macro in case of baby toes and fingers (which we did not have time for) I threw in my wide angle (gasp!) because I wanted to get some shots through the crib. As you will see, the wide angle (16-35mm) worked perfectly!!! You just have to be careful not to place your subject close to the edges when using a wide angle or they will be distorted. But it IS possible to find a balance for portraiture if you take the time to carefully compose. In this case, I had ample time to get the right shots as baby was snug in her own bed with Mom and Dad hovering like guardian angels. The nursery music was playing, the lights were down low and Baby couldn’t have felt more comforted or secure. It made for one dreamy baby shoot!
As for editing, it’s only been a week or so, but I can barely remember the steps I used to edit these! I know I used Touch of Light and Touch of Dark- a freebie by MCP that is my absolute favorite! It saves so much time making all those small light adjustments by hand! If you don’t have this action, check out MCP and see if it’s still available. And it’s FREE!
So I lightened in places that needed a touch, and darkened where necessary. For example, Mom has such gorgeous dark hair, when I lightened the image it looked dull and lifeless. I needed to retouch her hair (darken it) to bring it back to life. Other image lightening effects includes Quick Flash and Frosting, two wonderful, basic actions in MCP’s Fusion set, to add light and haze. Adding haze is a great filler for those stubborn shadowy spots in your otherwise light and airy image. You can mask it off the places where it interferes with image clarity. The Frosting action by MCP is a nice, clean haze, without any major color tint, although it does add warmth.
Normally I don’t edit light, so this was a stretch for me! My goal is to be able to edit in a bunch of different styles, so this was great practice! Especially as we were shooting indoors in fairly low light. I learned from my last shoot that babies move fast, so do NOT sacrifice shutter speed in favor of low ISO. This time I cranked my ISO to 1000, opened my aperture wide and let that shutter fly…FAST! And it paid off 
You can always smooth out a little grain in your image, but you can’t fix blur!!!
By the time the shoot was over, baby had been nursed, rocked and put into her bed., with the camera happily snapping away in the background. It couldn’t have been more perfect! Sweet dreams, little angel!
This is so beautiful. Thanks Rachel!