9 weeks

Look at this little guy! He has such loving parents. This is what happened during the session: he slept for awhile, was alert for awhile, eventually got hungry, was fed, snuggled with mom, snuggled with dad, snuggled with both mom & dad, stuck his foot in dad's mouth for awhile and then was ready to fall back asleep. It was super fun to capture his nuances...

The entire session was shot with a 50mm 1.8 lens on aperture priority with my Nikon D700. I usually shoot in aperture priority because I like to have control over the depth of field. For this image I didn't have enough light to keep the ISO at 200 (which is my preference so my focal area can be tack sharp), so I adjusted it to 400 ISO and got a shutter speed of 1/100 (I personally can't hand hold slower than 1/60 of a second). I set the f-stop at 3.5. I developed this image in Lightroom. I set it to grayscale and then tweaked the contrast, exposure and did a little adjustment (with the adjustment brush) around the lips to bring them up.

Aperture priority 1/60 sec at f/4.0, ISO 200. See the blue highlight in her hair and on baby's head? That is coming from natural light shining through the window on the right side of the room. I was using a softbox on her left and had set my white balance to incandescent, that's why the natural light coming in on the right looks blue. Kind of a happy accident, certainly not intentional.
Aperture priority 1/160 sec at f/4.5 ISO 1000, developed in Lightroom using the Sepia preset, I also tweaked the contrast a bit and used the adjustment brush to bring up the exposure on the baby, I used it to darken the lower right and left corners (like a slight vignette).

Aperture priority 1/200 sec at f/3.2 ISO 400. I cropped this image because I wanted to get in tighter to the baby's hand. I developed this in Lightroom and added the "general-punch" preset and then a vignette.

AP, 1/80 sec at f/4.0, ISO 400, Straight Out Of The Camera (no Lightroom tweaking).

AP 1/125 sec at f/4.0, ISO 400, SOOTC

AP, 1/125 sec at f/4.5, ISO 1000, developed in Lightroom, first set to grayscale then tweaked the contrast and exposure, I needed to use the adjustment brush to darken the exposure on the baby, I pulled the clarity slider to the left (just a touch) to soften the image then added a vignette.

AP, 1/40 sec at f/4.5, ISO 500, developed in Lightroom, used preset "direct positive" to really punch the colors then the adjustment brush to tweak the exposure, contrast and saturation in various parts of the image, then added a vignette.

I set up my studio in our home. I put the backdrop in our sun room. I use a soft box to light my subjects. The sun room can have a ton of natural light pouring through the windows. We have semi-transparent blinds and black-out blinds so I can adjust the natural light.


I purchased this light and softbox new from a used camera and equipment store in Santa Fe. It isn't sync'ed to my camera. I don't own any studio lights that fire with my camera (besides my SB 800 speedlight). I leave it on for the entire session and keep my camera in aperture priority, white balance set at incandescent. It can get hot, and the space gets warm which is great for babies, they love being warm.