Lessons

Lesson Info

6-8 Month Olds: Bucket Shot, Set Design, and Coloring

Now a lot of people always ask me do you on ly shoot baby planners on seamless paper no yesterday you know we did those floors which are really nice thank yu wei did those wood floor through nice and I'm gonna bring one of those in now from um yeah let's go with that one. This is from serendipity backgrounds I absolutely love their floors thank you. They are they look like real wood but they're printed on this like flextech material now issue with baby planners with these oh, I'm going to have to get some scissors can someone grab me a pair of scissors and cut off the back of my backdrop? I don't usually do it horizontal like this I want to cut off the back um going to the this white strip back here is seen in the images and when they come to you the floors they come with the white strip so I usually always cut it off. You can see I've cut it off on this long side because that's how I usually do it in my studio that maybe lauren I'll let you take over while I chat with folks um and the...

n so she's in this we have it's too low right tula is and she's seven months seven months old and she is in this darling I'll have dad louis can come on over here introduce us to the sweet girl but her but her back button here this little dress is from natural spring wonders and I'm in love with it uh I think it believe it stephanie hand that's the stuff uh just stunning and to holy my style so you'll have to find stuff that button is not one thing it's my fault you have to find stuff that works for you know you guys and what you love she's just a kihei speak girl how are you today oh yes look at those two miles look at that smile okay so I'm gonna go ahead and continue her a little bit in a bucket I'm kind of breaking away from what I said I was going to do so everybody's freaking out on me right now I'm not sure if I want to use white do we have the dark brown would work do we have that soft brown we were using yesterday? I don't know if we do the brown dark brown a work I can work with that okay so inside this bucket you should know is a fifteen pound sandbag okay how much she weigh twenty pounds so I what I want to make sure that the bucket doesn't tip over with her in it now it's a pretty shallow bucket uh so I'm not too concerned about it but on the taller ones you have to be really careful about the buckets tipping over so make sure you have a weight or something inside of it that'll prevent that from happening. Okay, so uh and she's still okay with separation anxiety, right, daddy? She okay for no okay, so oh yeah let's see? Do I want that one? Um I want that one and why would I decided to go with that one over that one? What do you think, doc? Yeah, okay. It's really? Six on one side half dozen naylor sometimes you'll see when you start to pair stuff together you'll look and go oh, that's going to be too bright that's going to take your eye away from the child and that's the most important thing is you don't want what you're doing to take away okay, daddy, I'm probably gonna have you stick around to stay in sight so she can see you trying to make twenty noise so she doesn't look at you unless I ask you some good high be night at least you know let's get you in that bucket. Look at that. What do you think? Oh, little dresses just delicious on you. Yes. Look at those toads, toads, awesome toes. What do you think? Think about those toes for me thank you think about those toes, maybe my reflector or watch her while you go get it perfect, thank you. Beautiful my darling thank you I just I like really soft light on the baby's right so I like to have from phil in there to make my shadow's not quite so intense when you doing e I usually start off kind of mellow engage how they're going to react to me she's just looking around the room like what's going on who uses a totally different personality than ever what do you mean with you it's unplugged what happened there is let's plug it back in watch her for me if you wouldn't mind miss lauren I'll get it we're good making it happen plug back in my good carry reboot reload thank you that's why you have an assistant and that's what the babies love to do what they love to go back that way you know I how are you doing we're good thank you look at all these people were going to a lot of work being a baby home yeah a lot of work waiting do that again here you want to see buzz let's go see but like I know you were coming I have to take a bath wait hold it can you press the button look no okay okay what so um I don't like him to get too riled up like I'll give him a second of crying but when they start to the tears start to roll I tend to know what their face to get all red and michy would tears so I try to prevent the tears from rolling too much, but I also don't want him happy through the session, so but I also don't just pick her up immediately right away when she's cried, I try to try to use something to engage her to get her distracted or something like that, but the buckets aren't the most comfortable thing in the world like that, so she gave me a couple shots and that's probably about all she's going to give me so we're going to go and remove the bucket does she get on that this morning? Daddy she's tired? Okay, so she didn't get enough when you're in this what's really challenge me about oh okay, sure let's get some air, those colorful balls so one of the issues with you doing model calls like this and folks have to wait around and there's other babies so the babies don't sleep, they're distracted so we're dealing with a little bit of an over tired baby right now, which is teo teo daddy just for a second and this is typically thank you so much you might try to go back to if he comes down with it this is classically what happens in a session with separation anxiety or something like that and I just give the baby back to the parents we take a break, we reset that kind of thing and then try to do it again. But like I said, tula has not had a nap. I that to me, is one of the kisses of deaths in this the sessions I totally planned sessions around naptime for baby planners like I want that kid rested and nap the nap is the most important thing, so if they don't get a nap, this's what you're goingto run into and it's going to take you a lot longer, you're going to have a kid who doesn't necessarily want to engage with you and it's just a lot of really overwhelming for them. So the nap is critical and make sure you playing our sessions in the mornings because children of this age are generally better in the morning, and they, uh, after that morning now, so bring him in right after the nap. You've got about an hour at the most to shoot and then you're done so you can see why I have to change. Set up quickly, get your shots and move on. Get a system in place. Three to four. Background is about all you can do. And that's moving fast. Okay, okay, let's, go ahead and talk a little bit. Maybe if she comes down a lot, but we can bring her in from last ten minutes, but in the meantime we could talk a little bit about set design and coloring. I think sometimes people get really confused with that and what to pick and how to pick it. So the biggest rule of combining colors and sets and buckets and props and things is too look at the color tones of what's available to you and pull that out so you can see what I saw here wass the metal bucket and the gray tones in the floor, this floor has brown and pink and gray and this dark tone in the floor, so I literally just pulled the colors from that too match the dress that the child was wearing did you see that? So you know, let me bring out the white house, the white further in it a lot of people would do this, they would say, oh, this is cute, but when you shoot that which I will show you as an example, let's, go ahead and shoot it hopefully that worked, it takes a minute to reset doesn't ok anyway, we'll get it once you see this image, you'll see and you could even see looking at, you know, sam's got the shot here of the actual set up with the lights and everything you can see that white blanket is like the first thing you see so if I put a baby in there, the skin tone of the baby is more in line with the topi peachy tones that are in the floor in the background so if you put that white in that bucket, the white is going to take away from the child ok? So I always ask students to really think about the point of highest contrast in an image there you go you could see that that white I mean well white just like everything else is it comes out, but the minute I take away the white and shoot the image then all of a sudden you see the bucket, you're going to see the child and there and obviously we don't have a child to work with right now but the child in there and you're going to see it be less contrast e and maura about if there was a baby that way more about their skin tone can you see the difference like the one on the right is going to be so much more congee use of to a portrait less is more or less is more or less is more now I need something in that bucket to be soft and lovely for the baby so I can use just a soft tone for just by taking the fur down a notch in color tone this is the difference just like that the other thing that you can d'oh which I do all the time is worse my little sneaky thing you do we have that thank you doing things on the fly live television for you so I'll put something saw from the bottom put the little snaky thing around it and then take a fabric these are brilliant by the way you can get these at any fabric store you get this it like a bed bath and beyond this is like everybody in every country in the world sells these things this is just a draft stop or three foot draft stopper I would find a couple different links if you can so just wrap it inside the the edge of the bucket okay it might be a little newborn that's great but for baby it's needs to be a little whiter this is called ribbing okay you can get this at any fabric store it is joined together peekaboo you can look for it through it it's not it's all one piece there's no seem you buy it like this at the fabric store okay it's called ribbing r I b b I n g and it's like an infinity scarf but it's stretchy so you can put it on the inside and then wrap it around the draft stopper to create a smooth edged look you kind of have to tweak it a little bit this draft this fabric a little bit big but that's okay, you can create a neat pretty edge that allows your baby to be tucked inside there and I will shoot this and you will see the difference between that and the first time I'm a little wrinkled. I probably straighten that out a little bit, but I just want to show you the difference between these different looks that are a little bit more effective for a portrait rather than using something that's super high contrast like the white. Okay, so be thinking about how color combined and how textures combine to create contrast an image and whether or not you want something that's going to stand out more than anything else, does that make sense. So the baby's skin and eyes and face or what you want to stand out the most? Okay. And that's super super important to creating a portrait that has the baby as the focal point is the first thing that you see inside the image. Thank you. Thank you for showing up with the beauty of live television without the baby. So we have no more babies to bring back. Okay, so think so. Thank you for showing us the way we do have a few questions about what's going on here and let me know he wise, if you have any questions up there but a lot of it was with regard tio okay, well, here's a good one from megan couture motion how do you deal with the crawling when they get mobile? How do you capture the standing phase? Just wait until they're walking they're crawling all over the place. Yeah, and that the tomorrow we're gonna work with one year old and that is the hardest session to do because they are mobile they're they're taking crawl at that point and sometimes they're quick little butters I mean, they could run in front of you, it's much it's a seriously it's a lot of baby crawling bringing back shoot me be crawling bringing back I mean it's it's a little bit mayhem at least in my studio it is but you know the cake smash their so enthralled the cake smash that that kind of keeps him one spot. I also use things like stools. I have these little and these air just small stools that I got from antique stores, but they're super low and crawlers love absolutely love to push a stool around. So you put the stool and put the child behind the stool like this sitting down and they will push this or crawl with it yeah, I look like a baby, don't I? Sometimes I think cash, you probably look like a really silly person trying to get a little bit to be right now but yeah the crawlers love to either sit and push a stool or they'll be down like this and they'll try to push it across the floor and as long as you have you know, cute props that go with your style it really makes for a darling image and it's something that keeps him a little bit contained thank you you have more proper questions if that's all right yeah do you know this is from kathleen stockdale photography do you ever set up actual baseboards with the floor drop? Sometimes I have a couple of baseboards no often think it depends on the backdrop that I'm using yeah, but oftentimes I am extending backgrounds and uh shooting and shooting so that I could do things that photo shop later sometimes having the spaceport isn't necessarily a good thing but yes I do especially with the more decorated backgrounds with the floor like that I will put up a a baseboard but what's really important you khun see back there that kind of wrinkled edge on the background it's not exactly clean I'm shooting it like f one point eight so with an eighty five millimeter lens so that's gonna throw my background out of focus and you're not going to see that's what I mean nearly as obvious in the image as we see it here so I'm accounting for that right. Thank you. Could you remind us? Do you know if the top of your head what those colors are back out and okay, I've seen one. This is picon. And this is all, if coverage thing. Yeah, it seems paper. And then I think it's either savage or or superior that carries a color called suede gray, which is one of my absolute favorites. I love pecan bone was what we used yesterday. And that could said that's all. If you purchase the class that's, all the resource is list. Every single thing I use in my studio and the resources list perfect. And that includes the years yeah, here everything can you remind us this is from a mercedes bloodgood, do you always work with an assistant in all of these types of you know is a matter of fact, I do most of these baby planet sessions by myself with the parents, the newborn session. I don't want mom near the baby because her smell the sound of her voice. Her touch, like, triggers that feeding instinct. So I have found that with newborn sessions and just for safety reasons. Lauren is trained and skilled to handle newborns on the being valued in these environments that we shoot with. So I really want her there for the newborn session. But for these baby plant sessions, mom can help out it's, pretty simple, assisting it's. Not a huge thing, and so she usually it's mom or dad who's helping me. And sometimes I really want mom and dad there. If you have a child with huge separation anxiety, you need to have mom in the shot. So what I'll do is shoot over the shoulder like we did with, as around his newborn session. Or I'll have mom just with her jeans in her bare feet, especially the one you're aids holding them and helping them stand up. It's, mom's face is never in the image, but baby feels better because he's with mom.