Babies and Christmas Lights

In the middle of the night I started editing this image. Amelia {9 months} woke up with a cough (uggg) and I could not fall back asleep. So… I began looking at the images we had taken a few days before. The studio had a delivery of new hats and props for the holidays. We have new backdrops, floordrops, hats, buckets and sleds.

The Christmas lights have been giving me a problem for long time. Since we shoot only studio I had a hard time getting them to glow they way I wanted. Here is what I found:

1. You have to put your shutter speed WAY WAY down. I wanted to keep her on the floor at eye level so a tripod would not work. I ended up using a book as a tripod to keep my hands steady. But Amelia does not stay still. So it took lots of shots. Many of the shots had a halo around her face which did not work. Out of 20 shots we got 2 that worked.

2. The lights we so fascinating she would not respond to my voice {and I am her mom!}. I had to embrace a softer look with this setup instead of a smile.

3. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the new floor drop. The dark color wood against our brown wall made the perfect setting. We need to get more of these!

4. Keep the aperature as low as possible. In this case I shot 3.5 which gives me that lovely depth of field.

Here are some of the other images that we took that day: