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Part I : Barbara, Stijn & …

36 weeks

Last month wenti’s sister & Stijn came to visit us and we talked about doing a photosession so they would have some nice photographic memories of her their nine months. This weekend the shoot took place. As for them, this was my first pregnancy session. We had a fun afternoon and they gave me carte blanche to try a couple of things. I wanted to combine a couple of belly shots & couple shots, without going to cliché.  The whole shoot went a lot smoother than I thought,  when this close to having a baby boy/girl the parents really shine , and that shows in the pictures. Stijn wasn’t really looking forward to having his picture taken but he got into it very fast (and very into it). Barbara was a natural, but what mom-to-be wouldn’t be proud with a nice belly like that.

For the above shot I also took a blue background version cause even I don’t known the gender of the newborn yet. As for the below shots: They live in this great loft with lots of nice rooms & big windows and a giant fat boy bag , so finding locations & setups was easy.

As with the newborn shoot, I really like doing things like this (maybe its my biological clock ticking) and I’m very satisfied with the results and I think Barbara & Stijn are as well. And that makes me even more content.

More pictures & different styles coming up next week! So do come back and check them out.
For people interested in the tech strobist stuff. It’s in the comments on my flickr stream.

Sweet little newborn: Nuno

I believe I asked the mom-to-be 3 months ago if I could take some pictures of her little one once he was born. So needless to say I was really looking forward to this session. I’ve read a book about baby photography, tag surfed around to see other photographers work, but even with all this preparation you just have to improvise on the spot. Little Nuno was not in for a nap and his tummy had a mind of its own that day. But the reward when downloading your pictures to you computer is really overwhelming, so I really want to do this kind of work again. And coming to think of it, I don’t think I’ve met a male baby photographer yet …

Thanks Fleur & Sam for letting me do this and I hope you enjoy the results!

more pictures can be found here

FILLESFOLLES.BE PART II

Away from the seamless backdrop

After a couple of hours into the fillesfolles.be shoot I felt like I was losing a bit of concentration and focus, making small mistakes on the lighting, posing etc..

The ladies also already had a long day so for them a change in scenery would work well too. We had the complete soccer stadium at our disposal and went out and scouted the area a bit, looking for some interesting scenes.

The VIP lounge was a clear bright white area that overlooked the field. Shooting without some fill lights would give me nothing but overexposed sky from the big window so I brought in a light stand and a shoot-trough umbrella with a 1/4 CTO gel. The girls had a lot of fun and really went into their new role.

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This was actually a shot that I took during one of the earlier breaks.
I saw a great picture opportunity so I ran back to get my camera and a voice activated light stand holding a flash & umbrella.

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Not everything was shot with flash, in this shot, the indoor VIP seats gave me a great line to work with. And my model felt more at home here than she did in the studio. The longer focal range & larger apreture made sure the background isn’t distracting.

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Getting outside to the stands I posed the group in a V formation standing in the big entrance to the field.
I couldn’t use my umbrellas because of the high wind conditions and to make things worse the batteries on my flash were dying on me.

Filles Folles Groupshot

I didn’t get the most out of this shot, my group direction skills still need a lot of tuning (get everyone with the same facial expression, take more shots to avoid blinkers etc) and on the technical side there is lots of room for improvement (sky exposure, light setup). Sadly mistakes like these happen but they make you a better photographer on your next job.

Still, looking back on that day, I have more satisfaction from these couple of shots because they made me think & improvise on location. And this is how you learn to progress.