Newborn Photography Tips | Raphael | Precious Gift

© 2011 Wazari Wazir | Newborn Photography | My Son, Raphael

I’ve done this same set up with my first son HaiQal, almost exactly the same, I like to show how small my son in relation with the size of my wife so when he grows up, he will know how small he is and how much he have grown. Talking about sense of scale here so the viewers will get the idea about the size of my son Raphael.

Basically tips for taking newborn picture is like normal photography, I’m not an expert on this one but I can share what I like to do, the thing that we must keep in mind is that to make it simple, the focus should be on the baby and please avoid anything that will distract our attention towards he baby.

This is just a simple shot, just with “door light” because I took it just right in front of our door house. I tell my wife to wear a black T-Shirt and I put a large black velvet hanging against the door behind, so that I will get a complete black background. Pretty straight forward and simple set up.

It may look like cut and paste photograph but the truth is, it not cut and paste but straight forward photographs. How do I get a sharp edge to edge here, very simple, I use manual metering for this one because if you choose to shoot in Auto or Program Mode, the camera will think that the “environment” is a bit dark and try to compensate the exposure hence giving “extra” exposure and the result will be a bit washed out, you will never get deep pure black image.

To counter this problem, I use “Spot Metering, you can also use “Partial Metering”, if you confuse about this metering, refer back to your Manual camera book and look for metering and find out about “Spot Metering or “Partial Metering”. What this metering does is that, it will only take reading from small area in the frame compared to “Matrix Metering or Evaluative Metering” where the camera will took reading on overall frame and give you the average reading for the exposure and in this case you will never get solid black background using “Matrix or Evaluative Metering”.

I highly suggest you to use Manual Exposure and use “Spot Metering” to take the reading. take the reading from the baby face or any mid tone area and then recompose, when you recompose the shot, the metering will change but if you use manual exposure, you don’t have to worry, the most important thing is you get the right exposure for the baby face or any mid tone area of the baby.

For the first picture on top where you see my bay head up front, don’t take the reading from the hair but instead take the reading from his skin tone or in this case I took the reading from my wife hand, if I took the reading from my son black hair I will never get solid black background, I guess you get the idea now.

Once you get it right, there is nothing much to do in Photoshop, very few editing need to be done f there is any. You can play around with S Curves to darken the black a bit and you are done.

I took the shot above with 50mm lens, using ISO 200 at f2 and I use 1/250 shutter speed with pure natural light. It is not advisable to use this setting because the lighting at your place might be different, the reason I use ISO 200 is because the lighting at my place during the photo shoot is not that bright, so I have to increase the ISO, otherwise I will use ISO 100 and if you use 50mm at wide aperture like f1.4 or f2, make sure you use shutter 1/100 and above to prevent camera shake, always start with ISO 100 and if you can’t get fast shutter speed, then only increase the ISO.

Have fun shooting, because the moment never comes again. If you have anything to ask, use the comment box below…