New to newborn shots

[jax314]

I took this shot for a friend and to me (who admittedly doesn't know a lot about this) it looks pretty good. How is the composition/crop and colors? More importantly, with baby shots, am I supposed to smooth her skin? Thanks!

D5000
35mm
ISO 2000
1/80
f/2.8

[Big Nick]

With newborns, its good to overexpose them a little to take the blotches out of their skin, also you should do some post processing to smooth it out a bit and make sure there are no marks and stuff. But its a nice shot.

[jax314]

Is this any better?

[Big Nick]

Yeah thats good, looks a lot better

[dj-dubai]

how cute baby he is so cute grt shot man

[BigFuzzy]

Second one is much better, glad you didn't go overboard in the PPing.

One thing I would add is try to make sure to get as much light into the subjects eyes as possible as it's hard to see them now. A white reflector in front of the baby would have worked wonders I think..

Still, not a bad first attempt.

[NicolaB]

Cute! The second edit is much better. Crop looks good (I can't comment on colour my screen isn't properly calibrated for this time of day, but it looks good in the second edit).

The key for babies is to get their heads at 45º to the light. As Nick says and you can now see, yes smooth the skin as it evens out the skin tones and gives the creamy look.

[jax314]

Thanks for the replies and advice everyone.......I will definitely use this when I try again and hopefully you'll see some growth!

Take care!

[monkeyfacephoto]

Newborns are a genre all on there own. Just because you can photograph other things does not mean newborns will be your thing. (and vice versa) How did you like it? It usually takes a lot of practice. Newborns really like to move and are generally not happy cooperating when awake. This is one reason you usually see them asleep the other big reason is that they tend to not be able to focus when they are so young and so often they go cross eyed. You did really well on the PP.

[jax314]

Thank you. I actually liked it quite a bit, although I was really nervous. I wanted to get at least 1 good shot for my friend. Since I was doing this for free, that took some of the pressure off a bit.....but I would have liked to try other shots such as feet, with Mommy and Daddy, with bows, and stuff like that........but again, thanks for all the help. I thought I had heard once to leave baby skin alone......but I guess I was mistaken. I feel this post has helped a bunch!