I occasionally get requests from friends and past clients to do family portraits and such, but since I’m not really “A Family Photographer” I tend to be selective about which people I do private portraits for. If you are one of those families that dresses everyone up in white shirts and blue jeans for a family portrait in the fall colors that’s cool, but I’m not the photog for that gig.
If, on the other hand, you’re a kickass musician like my friend Vijoy and your lovely wife Lesley just gave birth to a gorgeous baby boy, I might be the right guy to take some creative baby photos.
Even though this was my first time shooting a newborn (Gavin was a week old when we did the photos) I knew that the youngster wasn’t going to take direction well, and I probably shouldn’t light him in the same way I’d light a heavy metal band. But even though I toned down the drama in my lighting, we still wanted some creative poses. I had a few ideas in mind, but Lesley had done some web surfing for inspiration too. It’s always awesome when a client has some creative input. It makes things much easier than if they’d handed me their infant son and said, “Here ya go! Make him look good!”.
So, after we’d started with some simple soft-and-fuzzy shots, we took advantage of Gavin’s musical heritage. His dad Vijoy is a talented musician and songwriter so there was plenty of musical gear lying around and we decided to stuff tiny Gavin into guitar cases and drums, and posed him on one of Vijoy’s guitars.
I’m clearly no Anne Geddes, but I think we did OK. Your thoughts?
Baby Gavin – Images by Corey Woodruff
Aww…I like the guitar shot. Nice work!