A Baby in the studio

[jventer]

I took this image from a baby the other day, any suggestions.

[Iguanasan]

I'm not a baby photographer but it looks to me like it's a fair bit too soft. I think it should be in better focus. The baby looks "washed out" colour-wise too which is not flattering.

Composition is great and I love the way he's poke his head up like that and not just laying there asleep.

[scorpio_e]

The lighting and comp look fine. The image looks soft.

[Marko]

I love it when members give the same critique as I would have given. Iggy's critique is bang on imo.

[jventer]

[jlabel]

Babies are very difficult subjects to photograph because their skin produces almost no shadow. I think you might want to try a closer shot with your flash offcamera and maybe a blurry detailed background, the way it is now looks like a product shot

[mindforge]

There are blown out areas on the baby. Try to reduce your exposure a little next time. Also, you are getting shine off the blanket/dropcloth. Photos of babies are hard to get to look professional. Avoid blowouts at all costs you are better underexposing. Get your flash off your camera to get more shadows to the exposure. You need a really big light source like a softbox placed off to the right front side and you need to expose so that the blanket disappears from the shot. Use the black dropcloths that do not reflect.

[jmayoff]

First off, the pose is really nice and I like the depth of field putting his little feet a bit out of focus.

Overall, though, I find it looks plain, like something dad could have done with a nice dSLR and some black dropcloths. I would have tried to inject a little drama with some more creative lighting. I'm sure that's easier said than done, though. I have no idea really what to suggest in terms of lighting although mindforge's comments make sense... get the flash off the camera and to one side to create some shadows.

One more thing: I'd like to see much more sharpness and brightness in the eyes. Marko did a podcast a while back on making the eyes sing and since then, I've always tried to do that on my portraits -- either in the camera or later in Photoshop.