What’s Your Preference?

autofocus · #1 (**permalink**) 12-07-2010, 02:26 AM

My wife has been shooting a lot of newborns lately, and very often they are in their little birthday suits. We've been peed on and pooped at, but I guess it goes with the territory. No matter how hard you try to keep their "junk" covered it's not always easily done. I think most parents wouldn't mind getting their little bundles in the all together, but I will not send these off to the lab in their "complete" state. So, you wind up with something anatomically incorrect that can look kind of weird. I guess with all the concerns about child pornography, and justifiably so, one can't be too safe nowadays. It just creates one more photo editing challenge.

superchud1 · #2 (**permalink**) 12-07-2010, 02:42 AM

We have a 2 month old and have been running into some of the same problems with our photos.

NicoleScraps · #3 (**permalink**) 12-07-2010, 02:45 AM

Even as a mom, I never took completely nude snapshot type photos of my kids as babies. Maybe laying on their tummies with the bare buttom showing, but that is as far as I would go. I have tons of the bathtub shots too, but I changed my angle or used a washclothe to cover private areas. It just feels kind of icky to have it all showing. Just my opinion though.

autofocus · #4 (**permalink**) 12-07-2010, 02:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NicoleScraps

Even as a mom, I never took completely nude snapshot type photos of my kids as babies. Maybe laying on their tummies with the bare buttom showing, but that is as far as I would go. I have tons of the bathtub shots too, but I changed my angle or used a washclothe to cover private areas. It just feels kind of icky to have it all showing. Just my opinion though.

Most times these are not intentional, but babies, as I'm sure you know, move a lot. So, you set up the shot, everything covered, legs in the right place, and then it happens, bingo...a cute, but inappropriate shot. The thing that's sad is if you have an all around really good shot, you have to then deal with this little problem...either a crop, or by performing some photoshop surgery.

Jim Poor · #5 (**permalink**) 12-07-2010, 11:40 AM

Please - spay or neuter your naked baby photos!

SusanH1970 · #6 (**permalink**) 12-07-2010, 12:43 PM

This is part of the reason I like to photograph newborns when they are less than two weeks old. They're still very sleepy at that age, and I try to get them into a very deep sleep before I start shooting. Keeping the room super-warm (if you're sweating bullets, it's perfect for the little one, lol) and white noise helps (even just patting their backs lightly and saying "shhhhh-shhhh over and over again works beautifully). Once they're asleep, I position them how I want them, and only move them little by little once I've got them in the basic position I want. When the baby is in the exact position I want, I then start to shoot, and instead of changing the baby's position a lot, I shoot from a lot of different angles. That way I get a variety without having to keep waking the little one up. The private parts stay hidden, and it's a whole lot less work behind the computer.

Older babies, on the other hand, DO move more and are much harder to get into that milk-induced baby coma, lol.

Murtasma · #7 (**permalink**) 12-07-2010, 01:57 PM

Jack gave me the middle finger in one of my pictures I took of him, try that on for size.

Biomech · #8 (**permalink**) 12-07-2010, 02:16 PM

Quote:

My wife has been shooting a lot of newborns lately,

Stopped reading there for the lulz :P

autofocus · #9 (**permalink**) 12-07-2010, 03:11 PM

Getting them to sleep is always the goal, and as they get a little older it seems to become more difficult to do that. The last job we did was with a baby boy ~3 months old. He was an insomniac!

Legs and arms going every which way, and your setups only last nanoseconds. Allowing mom to take the time to feed him (thought that would make him a little groggy), but to no avail, he wanted no part of it...just too many fun new things for him to check out. Maybe we should have fed him some leftover turkey...that always manages to put you to sleep on the couch after a Thanksgiving dinner..lol. We did, however, manage to get a lot of great shots of him while he was awake though....but there are those rather "delicate ones" that happen to come about from a position shift and somewhat tantamount to a wardrobe malfunction!