When you bring your newborn into my studio for his or her first ever Reno newborn portraits, I take my job extremely seriously and practice the the highest measures of safety for your baby. I have experience posing babies on bean bags and in props, and I have experience with lighting your baby properly and creating his or her beautiful portraits. When your baby’s session is done, you’ll feel comfortable and happy with the experience. But that’s not where the work ends for me!
Creating an image is part posing, lighting and snapping the shutter…but it’s also all the training and experience beforehand that go into every moment before I adjust my camera settings and press down on the button; it’s also the many, many hours of work afterward that “creates” what goes on your wall.
Basic Newborn editing
After your newborn’s session, I upload my memory cards to my computer (which also backs up to another hard drive), and then I import the files into my photo editing software and begin the long process of perfecting those beautiful images I snapped at the studio. This is where the images really come to life.
My “basic” editing process is actually pretty involved. I color correct the temperature of your photos. Fix exposure. Add contrast, or reduce it. Increase or decrease highlight/white/shadow/dark levels…remove redness or extreme yellow hues (hello, jaundice). Tone down or bump up vibrancy or sharpness. I basically spend a lot of time getting the image ready for…dun dun dun…retouching!
The Retouching Process
During the retouching step of my editing process, I remove neonatal acne (those white bumps nearly all babies have on their faces, especially), flaky skin if it is overwhelming, scratches from little baby nails, mom’s stray hairs and anything else that isn’t going to be a permanent part of your baby’s sweet face or body…with the exception of the umbilical cord stump!
It’s a unique process for each and every baby. Some babies I see have very red skin in the studio, and some have really dry skin…or splotchy skin. But no matter how your baby is on the day of his or her session, my goal is to just perfect those tiny imperfections without CHANGING your baby…which can take a photo from good to great. And it still looks exactly like your perfect baby – the way YOU see him or her!
I also fix backrop/backround/blanket/prop issues and create faux seamless backgrounds when needed; sometimes baby wants to be in a particular position and instead of moving her and potentially waking her from perfect slumber, I just adjust MY position, and therefore need to photoshop in a background just a touch.
Below are just a few examples of retouching on little Miss L after my “basic” edits and standard retouching. You’ll see that I didn’t remove any and all tiny flakes of skin, or make her skin look plastic or blurry. But I did – very carefully – remove that neonatal acne without removing her sweet little baby wrinkles, toned down the flakes of skin, smoothed out some blotchy red spots and added in a sliver of background in one of the images.
Miss L’s collection of photos took hours to complete after all of these steps. To me, it is worth it! And that is part of what you get with me as an experienced and professional photographer and expert retoucher.
I hope you enjoyed sneaking a peek at part of my editing/retouching process!
Fifth and Chestnut Photo Co. is an experienced and talented Reno Newborn Photographer who practices the highest measures of safety in a cozy Downtown Reno photography studio. We have the professional experience to create and perfect your Reno newborn portraits, while providing a wonderful atmosphere for you to relax in while baby’s photos get taken care of. Contact us today to chat about your amazing newborn photography experience in Reno.
