Newborn photography Leicester, Safety & TrainingAs a Newborn Photographer in Leicester, I strongly believe that safety is the number 1 priority in any business, but most important when working with precious little lives! I have undergone extensive training, my first workshop was in 2015, with Jillian Greenhill Photography from Abu Dhabi Dubai. Jillian came to the UK for our training and has a huge following of over 17,000 people! This was an amazing opportunity, and this is where all the magic happened. I’d never picked up a camera before this point and spent countless hours on YouTube, staying up till gone 3am whist looking after a baby and a toddler. But this is something I knew deep down id wanted to do, and when you want something enough you find a way to do it. I learnt so much on this course, lighting, styling, wrapping, posing and editing but most importantly safety. How to make sure we do everything in a safe manor. Please click here to read a blog I had written after the course. this course, I wouldn’t have started the business I have today! Following on from this, I decided to go on another workshop with a very close friend of mine, Ellie from Lux Photography. We travelled down to Blackpool where we spent countless hours with Rachel Vanoven from Indianapolis, America on another extensive workshop. Rachel has a huge following, of over 237,000 people! This workshop recapped everything I had learnt from Jillian and incorporated parent and family training to. It was again another amazing experience, and much was learnt from this. I believe you can never stop growing and leaning. Safety obviously comes first and is at the forefront of all work with newborns, we looked at handling baby safely, setting up the studio safely and safe posing of newborns. Due to already attending workshops, this was a more advanced posing where we concentrated on more complex composite poses, such as potato sac and the Froggy. This again is done as a composite where an assistant helps supports babies head, and then supports baby’s arms and we merge the images together in Photoshop after. We then fast forward to 2018, where a lot of exciting things are going to be happening for my business this year. We are refurbishing the studio at the end of march, revamping our products and creating new sessions. Im so excited to bring all of this to my clients! This is why I decided to go on another newborn course as I wanted to refine my poses and make sure everything was perfect for my clients. This time, I trained with Stacey Natar, in Cheshire. I wanted to focus on lighting in this workshop. We had some amazing models in and managed to get through everything I wanted to cover. As a newborn photographer in Leicester I learnt a lot from this training, I had a few ‘light bulb’ moments and have now changed the way I do my session’s. This was the most intensive workshop out of the three and I gained so much knowledge on how to really understand the babies and use a different concept of lighting. Im so honoured to have trained with three amazing teachers and can recommended them enough. I had the pleasure of meeting Karin at my first workshop with Jillian, she owns Peas in a Pod and is a newborn, baby and family photographer in Fremantle, Australia. Please see some of my work below
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HOW TO COMPOSITE NEWBORN IMAGES AND KEEP BABIES SAFEAs a newborn photographer in Leicester, my number one priority in a session is safety! “Compositing” is a very popular technique used by responsible newborn photographers. A composite image involves taking two or more images, and using Photoshop to combine them into one. There are a number of reasons for me composting images and im going to list a few below: 1) Young Siblings We have a number of returning customers last year, bringing with them a toddler and newborn. With this brings a number of safety issues and ones we are very careful with, those beautiful images of toddler next to baby is actually two separate images. With Bumps Baby Beyond we capture your toddler happily gazing down at their teddy/toy in the basket next to them; once we have finished with sibling we capture your newborn safely snuggled in the prop and put the two images together. 2) Certain Poses Sleeping newborns, with such precious little faces, make amazing photographs. Who doesn’t love a pair of chubby cheeks squished strategically between two tiny hands? All poses we carry out during your newborn session are 100% safe, your little one is so used to being curled up in your womb that they may have already been in these positions throughout your pregnancy. When re creating these images I want to insure no weight or pressure is put on your baby. This is why I have an assistant for EVERY session. She is fully trained in newborn safety and I believe this is crucial to running a safe session. The pose below is called the 'Froggy', when done correctly, it really is an adorable image. The entire face is visible, cute little feet are doing out, 10 little fingers and 10 tiny toes. 3) Digital Images Digital images are a brilliant way of adding variety into a gallery or creating stunning pieces of art without your studio bursting at the seems. With these images we capture your baby on a prop we have in the studio and then edit them into an image we already have. 4) Props If a prop is not stable for baby to be left alone in my assistant will always be sat at the side with either her hand just above baby or holding onto baby, here is a full edit of the pose, putting the images together, and then editing the final image I love how each photographer has their own style of editing that makes us all so unique! Amanda Haddow Photography, Newborn Photographer in Victoria, BC. images are crisp and beautiful, and I love her use of colour!
Evening all
Today I thought id share a little bit about myself and some recent training I have had. After having my second child I soon realised how precious time is and how quickly it rushes by! I decided I wanted to be able to create beautiful memories that stand still in time and are able to be looked upon for years to come. With this in mind I decided to go into photography, and specialise in Newborns. Recently ive been offering a few free newborn sessions to include in my portfolio. From that moment, I fell in love with this type of photography & desired to set it as my career path! I soon realised that every single newborn was so special and every session brings you new challenges. In the beginning, I lacked enough experience & confidence which was required to become an excellent newborn photographer. Taking shots of those adorable brand new babies is frightening enough, when you add posing them correctly, calming them in the presence of their parents who are ready to get involved the moment they cry, and making sure your adhere to all the safety aspects I decided to take an extensive newborn course. I then saw Newborn Baby Posing LTD advertising Jillian Greenhill’s Newborn Photography Workshop, I decided to book onto this course and I haven’t looked back! Jill made a special trip to the UK for this course and has an established business in Abu Dhabi. The workshop I attended is not simply about how to run the business you dream of, although that is of course, a huge part of its role. The absolutely vital knowledge anyone will need before they can hope to be a successful newborn specialist, is understanding a new baby. From the very start of my course they taught us how to read a baby, how to cater for their needs, how to ensure I communicate effectively with the parents during my relationship with them, and how to ensure that from start to finish, every baby is not only posed well, but is cared for, cared about, and kept safe and comfortable. This course focused on one of the main areas of newborn posing....handling, settling and soothing baby, and getting them to go to sleep, and stay asleep. Posing may seem like the main skill to learn, but if you can't get a baby to stay asleep, you wont be able to pose them. I learnt how to handle a baby confidently and safely, and also how handling correctly plays an important role in settling and once settled, how to pose flowing to give posing the greatest chance of success. Newborn safety is a huge part of what I was taught, I have seen so many people miss handle babies and leave them to hold themselves up in certain positions – this is a big NO NO! Any shots that require baby to hold themselves up (such as chin in hands and frog pose) are done as a composite – this is where mum/dad/helper are always holding the baby and edited on photoshop after. In summary, the main things to be gained from our workshops are: - Preparing parents for the session - Managing parents expectations - Setting up and styling for sessions - How to use colours, themes and set ups - Camera technique and settings - Safe posing and pose flowing - Soothing techniques to keep baby asleep throughout the session - How to use sleep patterns to obtain the best posing with the deepest sleep - Posing babies in props and using the beanbag and transitioning from pose to pose - Post processing I learnt so much from this course and could write about it all day long! Please take a look at some images I have taken on the day: |