I thoroughly enjoyed photographing the Taylor family! Little Randy, Sidney, and Brooke were truly fun to work with. Photographing babies can be intimidating for alot of photographers but in actuality it just takes a little bit of patience and alot of love to produce a beautiful baby image!I am a Nikon shooter but in this session I used Erika's Cannon Rebel. Because we used the natural light in Erika's bedroom, I shot in shutter priority mode with a shutter speed of 125 and an ISO of 600 with an external flash set at 2.0. This allowed me to bounce the light to achieve more of a natural look. Because Erika has dark colored walls in her room you will notice I bumped up my ISO to get a decent exposure. Here is a bit of a synopsis of how bouncing light works.• In photography it is preferable to bounce the light coming from our flash off of a wall or low ceiling. We are accustomed to overhead lighting, so the shadows produced by light bouncing down from the ceiling will seem more natural looking compared to a direct flash.• When the light from the flash hits the ceiling, it reflects down in all directions, illuminating the entire room. This creates a larger effective light source and produces more even lighting, softer shadows, and brighter backgrounds.• When properly used, bounced flash will help to create images that don’t look “flashed” at all.• Finally, bouncing will eliminate the red eye problems associated with direct flash.When bouncing the light from the flash unit the flash head should be tilted in an upward angle. The optimal angle for bouncing light is 60 degrees. On the back of the flash head you will find a scale that you can use to position the flash head at the proper angle. When bouncing the light select white or highly reflective surfaces off which to bounce the flash. Otherwise your photos will retain the color cast of the surface you are bouncing off of.Posing babies older than a 1-2 mos can be tricky. At this age babies are very flexible and usually just let you do whatever you want to them. I think Brooke was 3mos at the time of her photos. Although she was still flexible, she was developing more control of her body and would move out of her poses more quickly than a newborn (here is where the patience and love comes in). Remember posing is frustrating for the baby as well. Do not be afraid to use the pacifier... it is your friend! Often times the baby may not be fussy but extremely active. I find giving them the pacifier kind of distracts and soothes them enough to put them in a pose and have them stay there ( just one of the tricks i have learned).
