Newborn Photography Tips | Adding a Touch of Retro Style

@ Wazari Wazir | Newborn Photography | My Son | Raphael

According to Wikipedia Retro is a culturally outdated or aged style, trend, mode, or fashion, from the overall postmodern past, that has since that time become functionally or superficially the norm once again. The use of “retro” style iconography and imagery interjected into post-modern art, advertising, mass media, etc. It generally implies a vintage of at least 15 or 20 years.

Personally I like the outdated look, for me it have character, add weighted to the photograph, that’s why you will see a lot of photographers especially those who call themselves as an artistic portrait photographer like to add a little bit of texture into their photograph, to give them authentic look, feel and mood, but in this particular photograph of my son, I didn’t add the texture in the Photoshop, is was there in the very first place.

This photograph were taken at Hulu Langat Selangor, you may call it a Countryside, approximately one hour leisurely drive from Kuala Lumpur City Centre. I like this place, actually this area are favorite spot for city dwellers to spend their weekend with their family, there are many attraction here and among the greatest attractions is the waterfall and in fact next to where I photograph my son is a small stream which is safer for the children to play, just a knee deep and the current is not so strong.

Back to the photograph above, in order to get a great looking picture, we need to plan, I always planned my photo shoot with my family, whenever we go outing, we will always bring extra clothes with us, especially for our sons, now we have two of them.  My favorite color are grey, not too much colors and simple clothing work best. We don’t want the colors or the cartoon on the clothes to get all the attention, it should be minimal, as you can see there is little colors on my son cloth, just a red strip of American flag. I love Malaysia but it just that I couldn’t find the right flag with the right clothes, I mean I just could not find the right combination.

My point writing this article is that, you must get the right elements in order for everything to work seamlessly. You need the right clothing material, the fabrics, the colors and the right photographs or image in the clothes to make everything work well. I rarely photograph my son with a cartoon character on his shirts, my son have a lot of cartoon T-Shirts, every kids love cartoon character but when it comes to photography purpose, I will leave the T-shirt at home and just take the plain one with me.

Back to the retro style, you need to find a Retro environment, a Countryside is the best place to go. Off course you can buy or bring all those “retro props” into your house and photograph your child at the comfort of your home but it is great if you can bring your whole family to enjoy the countryside, and at the same time enjoying the photo shoot.

Always make a habit to scout for a potential location for a photo shoot whenever you have a free times, this will make you and your family happy, since you know exactly where to photograph them and know very well what type of clothing will work for that particular environment.

A retro style will give a little bit of a character or feel to your photograph, retro style is timeless, classic but for the photograph above, I wish I can clone out that “2007” from my son T-Shirt, it was easy to do but I was too lazy to do it.

One last thing, if you can plan the photo shoot, always plan for the best because I believe our family deserves the very best in photography.

*The photograph above were edited with one of the technique from my Photoshop Tone Secret eBook, click the banner below for more info…

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