Quarantine Collaboration || Beautiful Newborn Portraits Even If You're Stuck at Home
Let’s work together to make unique portraits of your newborn baby even though we’re all stuck in our homes.
We are all experiencing an upheaval of our normal lives. We are worried about getting sick, losing our income, going stir-crazy, and more. We have lost a lot of our ‘non-essential’ activities. Our gray hairs are coming back, we need a pedicure BAD, and we really just want to sit at a restaurant and eat some queso. Yes, these things are trivial and I’m being silly, but these things are important for our overall well-being. New moms are missing out on getting their newborn photos done and unlike a long over-do pedicure, you can’t postpone them for very long.
So I’m starting a project where we can work together to create beautiful newborn portraits even though we are all stuck at home. With a little bit of photoshop magic I’ll be able to take a photo that you take at home and composite it into a designer background to create portraits like this:
What You Need:
a cute, new baby
a sliding glass door (preferably) or a space with bright, even, natural light (no sun streaming into the room leaving bright streaks of light)
a black or brown (or the darkest color you have) blanket or sheet
pillows, receiving blankets, burp cloths
a digital camera or phone with a good camera app
Let’s Get Started!
Tip #1 If you have a digital camera, definitely use it. The resolution will be better and the photo will be able to be printed large. If you only have your phone, I highly suggest downloading the VSCO app and shoot in RAW. I’m not familiar with phone camera apps and I’m betting there are others, but I tested this one myself and it works great!
If you use this app it’ll save a jpg and a dng(raw) file to your phone. Send me the dng file. If your phone doesn’t support an app that can shoot in RAW format we’ll still be able to use your images but you won’t be able to print them larger then probably 5x7. They should work fine for a birth announcement though!
Tip #2 You will want your baby to be sound asleep. This is usually about 30 minutes after a FULL feeding. Mornings tend to work better, but every baby is different. Make sure the room is nice and toasty (75°—80°). If you have a Baby Shusher or sound machine, they are usually helpful.
Tip #3 You will use natural lighting. The best option is a sliding glass door that is south or north facing (so the sun doesn’t shine directly in the window when the sun is rising or it isn’t too dark when it’s setting). If you don’t have a sliding glass door, find the brightest, evenly lit spot in your home near a window. You don’t want any bright streaks of light or big changes in the lighting. Nice, even lighting. And turn off all of the indoor lights. If it’s warm outside you can open the front door and work there or even in the garage with the garage door open. You do NOT want to go outside because we want ‘directional lighting’ meaning it’s darker on one side of the baby and the light is coming from the other side.
Tip #4 Make a big donut shaped mound for the baby to lie on. This dog bed is a great example of the shape we want. But, the dog beds are probably too big and too soft and won’t hold the baby in the shape we need them in, but it’ll give you an idea of the shape we are going for. One mom suggested a couple of those airplane neck pillows. Rolled up blankets work perfectly.
You will make a similar mound shape and then lay your black or dark brown blanket over the top. Don’t worry about what the blanket looks like. It will be wrinkled and messy and it doesn’t matter at all. The main concern is that it is dark AND it doesn’t cover any part of the baby.
Tip #5 Posing the baby is the hardest part to explain so bear with me. His/her head should be slightly elevated and facing up to the ceiling. A slight turn of the head will look more pleasing and help with proper light direction. The baby’s body should gently sink into the middle of your ‘poser’ and his/her bottom should land on the other raised part. This will help roll baby’s legs and feet up and inward, so they are curled and squishy looking. If they are all stretched out they won’t fit into the digital backgrounds correctly.
Below is the position we are going for. Notice how the feet are curled up on top of their mid-section. Face is looking up towards the camera. Hands are relaxed. There’s always a slight backwards C-curve.
I made a video that you can find pinned at the top of my Facebook Page, however I’m not sure I explained myself well enough. I’m going to try and draw some diagrams here but I am ridiculously bad at drawing, so this should be interesting. Try not to laugh too hard.
Tip #6 Where you place the baby in relation to the light is critical in order for the composite to look realistic. The light should be coming from camera-left and should shine from the top of the baby’s head, down. This means their head should be closer to the window then their feet. If their feet are closer to the window, the light will be shining UP the baby, creating harsh, un-natural shadows (similar to putting a flashlight below your chin so you look like a monster…just not as intense).
Good lord this is hard to explain. Did you ever have to do the exercise in school where you had to explain how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and someone else had to do exactly what you said, and it was ridiculous? That’s what this feels like. Something that comes so naturally to me sounds terrible when I try to explain it! And I was a freakin’ teacher for 11 years. 😂
Ok, so I’m going to stop here. There are directions for using another background for this same type of shot and directions (pretty good ones I think) on how to do the Simba pose on the Facebook video I mentioned earlier. It’s pinned at the top of my page HERE.
Newborn Simba Pose
Take some test shots and send them to me before you invest a lot of time into this. I will be able to give you suggestions to improve on the shots before you attempt the real thing. You can email them to me at photography@jessicadoffing.com or message me through Facebook. When you have the real shots, upload them to Dropbox or Google Docs or something similar and send me a link. If you just attach them to an email they will most likely get compressed and not work well. I will make sure they will work for a composite and send you examples of backgrounds that you can choose from. I also plan on going into the studio regularly to make custom backgrounds just for this project, so they will match up even better.
Email or message me on Facebook if you have ANY questions at all. I’m bored and look forward to interaction and something productive to do!
Good luck! Let’s have some fun with this. Hopefully this will pass over soon and we can get back to normal. 🤞🏻
Jessica
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