I’m a Dad!
On January 10th my beautiful daughter Isabella was born at 11:23 pm, which is actually really cool because it’s also my Grandma’s birthday (she was 91 on that day last week!)
So needless to say the photography has begun! It’s a lot of fun – I love taking pictures, and now I have a model that doesn’t mind having her picture taken (granted I do have to work around her schedule) and of course everyone loves seeing pictures of a new baby so everything works out!
It’s hard to describe the feeling of being a new Dad. It’s almost strange to me that this is something that many other people the world over experience in their life – it feels like something so incredibly unique to me personally, but it’s a common occurrence in a human’s lifetime. So far we’re still in getting to know each other mode, but having never had a baby before I think she’s very well behaved, seems very aware, and has a general happiness level that’s high on the charts!
Over the last few days I’ve been taking some photos and I promise that once I get my act together I’m going to do some tutorials. I believe many of the tutorials going forward will be on particular photos and also what to do with photos once you’ve taken them. Today I’m going to share a few photos that I just took.
The photo above is one that I took this afternoon and one that I’m very pleased with. I took this in natural light of Adriana holding Bella with a 50 mm f/1.2 lens. I set this to f/1.2 to allow maximum bokeh (and minimal depth of field, which you’ll remember from the aperture post). This creates an image where just the back of the head and Adriana’s fingertips are in focus, the rest of the image fading into blur. I then took the photo from Lightroom into Silver Effex Pro, where I converted to B&W and very gently reduced the clarity to make sure the lines weren’t too harsh. I wanted the photo to have a gentle look to it and I think it’s achieved here.
The next two photos are similar and were taken in a similar way. These were also taken with the 50mm f/1.2 lens, but I used a smaller aperture (f/3.2) to make sure there was enough focus on both the baby and Adriana. The photo at the bottom used an aperture of f/1.6; I wanted to create a photo where the baby is the focus and Adriana’s smile is in the background. I think this is well achieved here, and the images lend themselves to B&W not just because of the ugly flannel shirt my wife was wearing (haha!) but because I really believe some images were simply meant for B&W. I then had a post crop vignette to all of the images to give them a slightly more concentrated focal point, bringing the image out from the frame.
Finally, I leave you with a video that I took. Some of you that read my blog regularly will remember that I got some video equipment – especially a slider. This is a tool where I can put my camera on it, then “slide” (as the name implies) to create a different type of image or view. Right now my playing around with it has been very limited, and Isabella’s sleep schedule is so sporadic that I never know if it’s worth getting the equipment out to try and take a video before she flips out. Anyway, I put together a very basic and rough first video using some of the slider footage; I look forward to working on more of these in the near future.
I hope you enjoy these photos and the video, needless to say I’m extremely busy now trying to learn how to take care of my daughter and meet her needs, but at the same time I also have some time off work so it may be that I’ll be able to get some more posts up in the next week before having to return. So please keep stopping by and you can see more images of my beautiful daughter!
Postcard Intellect 