When Danielle brought out a hoodie for Sam a few weeks ago, I knew I had to photograph him in it for the incongruity of him just being a little baby in a hoodie. But I wasn’t sure what look I was going to go for. Then I remembered my snoot. Hooked that up to the flash and boom, no need for Photoshop or anything - this is exactly how it came out of the camera.

What I edited and what I didn’t

Danielle mentioned that it looked like I’d messed around with the image because the strings on Sam’s photo looked fake. Actually, that’s how it was captured in the camera. The strings were reflective and, as I’m about to get into, there was a lot of light in this shoot. There are only two things I did to edit these photos. For both of them, the balloons ended up floating higher than the backdrop. So I had to extend the backdrop digitally. Luckily for other reasons that I’ll get into in the lessons learned section, I’d been trying to blow out the background and make it pure white. In computer terms, I wanted it represented by (255,255,255) or pure white. So it was less of a pain to extend the background to make it look real - I didn’t need to use a clone or healing brush. It was already white so I just painted in white (I actually did something a little more complex, but this is fine for the analogy). For Sam’s photo, the balloons and strings caused a bit of a shadow behind the strings so it’s not pure white there. The strings are so skinny that it wasn’t worth trying to paint over this with white. I tried a couple times and then gave up and reverted it.

When Scarlett was born, I went a little crazy. Sure, it’s natural for first time parents, especially someone with my personality. But I think I also deserve some slack because it was a difficult, complicated pregnancy and then Scarlett needed surgery in her first week of life in order to live.

So when I saw myself starting to act crazy again (after another crazy pregnancy with premie babies), my solution was to withdraw. If I didn’t get too attached, I wouldn’t have such visceral reactions to my underweight daughter not eating. So I threw myself into my books and video games. It was made easier by the fact that my mother in law was here, so I had more opportunities to run off. But then, a week ago (and I’m writing this post about a month before this will appear on my blog), I realized that I had been letting their infancy slide past me without enjoying it. And so I put myself back into their lives. This was made easier by nearly five months of the doctor weighing Stella and finally being OK with her weight. Also, we’d found out she was lactose intolerant and switching her away from mother’s milk and cow-based formula caused her to transform into a happy baby. But now I’m really enjoying the heck out of the twins and it’s a joy to see them each day.

There’s a story about my childhood my mom is fond of telling. My dad asks Daniel (the brother born after me) to do something. To my father’s consternation, he refuses because it would make me mad. It’s funny to see a similar situation going on with the twins and Scarlett. Part of it is familiarity - Scarlett is home with them every day; but the kids will smile or laugh more easily with her than with me. This video is an example of that which I found amusing. We’ll see if I find it amusing if I find myself in a situation similar to my father.

You never know what’s going to happen when you try to take portraits of babies. Throw in the extra unpredictability of kids of any age and it’s a crapshoot whether a photo shoot is going to turn out to be fun with rewarding photos or a series of photos of your children crying.

One thing we have on our side with the studio being in the basement is that we can take photos when the kids are ready, not on a hope and prayer that they’ll be ready when we get to Sears, Target, or wherever people are getting portraits done nowadays. So we started off with easy portraits in the morning on the “Baby Portrait Couch”. Hey, it’s a tradition started with Scarlett!