NDR-Baby photos

Ok, three of my friends just had babies. All within a month of one another. Anyways, I just got the bright idea that now would be a great time to offer any services I could to practice taking baby photos.

Before I do that, I would love any tips you may have. The one thing I am very curious about is the flash. Yes, I know natural light is way better, but if I wanted to use a flash (I have one that points in different directions), should I point it at the baby, or is that a big no no. Is it better to difuse it by bouncing it off the walls or ceiling?? Will it hurt their eyes??

There are a lot of photos out there that have the typical black or white background and I love those simple shots. Is there anything I could use that would make a great and cheap black or white background?

 

Available light isn't always better. We don't have much control over natural light, but we have complete control over the flash, which in my opinion makes it better for things like portraits and architectural interiors, still life, etc. Anyway, a couple of good sites to learn more about flash are Strobist and Joe McNally's Blog. Also, Kelby Training has some good videos on flash. Joe McNally's class on small flashes and David Ziser's Wedding Photography classes are great. They'll let you watch the first couple of videos in each series for free, you have to get a subscription to watch the rest.

For the backgrounds, if you are only going to photograph the baby, you could get away with material from the fabric store to use. If you are going to have the parents in the picture too, then you'd probably need a larger background and have to look at getting something like Roger recommended. Plus, the bigger background will allow you to continue photographing the babies as they grow up.

The two most important things to getting good light from a flash are to diffuse the light and get the flash off the camera. Diffusing the light is pretty easy. That means shooting through something (soft box, umbrella, etc.) or bouncing the flash off something. Cheapest thing to bounce off of is a white wall. If you don't have a white wall, you can use a reflector like a Lastolite Tri Grip or something as simple as a piece of white foam core. The important thing is using white because it won't add any color cast to the image. You might want to play around with warming up the white balance just a little bit because skin looks better in slightly warmer light (we look better in incandescent lighting than fluorescent).

Getting the flash off the camera is important as well because light originating from the same axis as the lens and the same plane as the sensor tends to be ugly light. If you move the light off the camera, either by bouncing it off something or by physically taking the flash off of the camera and holding it off to one of the sides, you get much more interesting light because you start to introduce shadows into the photo.