I've been hesitant to post these for a while because I don't wanna be all 'HEY! LOOK AT MY KID!', but it's become a bit of a project over the past few months and I'm quite proud of how everything has turned out, so screw it - you guys are getting baby pictures!
After Ezra was born, he had some pictures taken by a photographer in the hospital (apparently that's a thing now). After seeing these, Holly wanted me to take some 'proper' pictures (in other words, get my lights and backdrop out) at various milestones. We decided on doing a shoot every three months, leading up to his first birthday.
Now, I've never really done any kind of portrait photography before (never mind with a baby!), so I've been learning as I go along. The set up for all of these is the same, I put a grey blanket over a table (facing a window for that natural light, yo!) and stood my pop-up backdrop on a couple of chairs. I used a couple of cheapo softboxes to help get nice even light and in some instances, I bounced a flash off the ceiling.
Anyway, enough of the waffling - have a look at some pictures!
(Spoiler'd for your consideration)
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0 Months Old (not taken by me)
ShowThese were some of the shots that the hospital photographer took. In case you're wondering what the marks on his face are, he really didn't want to come out of there - so forceps had to be used. Yeah, that was a bit yikes...
This was my first shoot and the most difficult of all. At this age, he was too young to hold himself upright and it was also before he really started smiling. So most of the shots I got were of this grumpy looking, uncomfortable baby. These four shots were the only useable ones of the lot. Even still, for my first attempt at anything like this - I was really pleased with how the four useable shots turned out!
At six months, Ezra can sit himself up! He's also smiling a lot, so this shoot was so much easier than the last. We decided to give it a loose theme of Ezra and his favourite things, allowing me to utilise a few different props for some more interesting pictures.
Each shoot is easier than the last. Not only is he becoming a lot easier to work with as a subject, but I've got this whole thing down to a routine now. A lot of the learning from this shoot came in the postprocessing side of things - especially in making the backdrop all nice and even. I may have gone a tad too far in some places, but I can pixel peep till the cows come home. (#neverfinishedonlyabandoned /lucas).
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So, there's only one more shoot left before this little project is complete. Once these are all done, we're gonna make a photo book, and the images from these shoots will act as the bookends between all the general snapshots. No doubt we will end up continuing this past the one year mark too! It's been a great way to learn more about photography, but also a really neat way of being able to chart how much Ezra has grown and developed, not just visually - but personality-wise too.
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12 Month Update (26/07/2020)
The big 12 months, has it really been that long?! It's not his birthday until Tuesday, but apparently he's 12 months old? I dunno, ageing babies is weird. Anyway, this was actually quite a difficult shoot that had to get cut short. We didn't get started until later than I would have liked, so he was pretty tired and cranky, resulting in a lot of pictures of a kid that doesn't look one bit happy about being there. I'm planning a more birthday themed shoot for Tuesday, so hopefully, that one will go a bit smoother!
