Day Seven: This is Isaac

After an aborted attempt the other night (Day 5) Molly and I went to Buy Buy Baby after school today and bought a Bumbo. At 14 weeks, he can't sit up by himself for more than about 10 seconds before losing his balance and falling over on his side. But the Bumbo sits him up and finally let's me photograph him from angles I understand. I am terrible at newborn portraits...I see people put peacefully sleeping newborns in things that look like the macrame plant holders I made at summer camp as a kid. I tried to put Isaac in a basket to photograph him once. Once.

The Bumbo let's him sit up and move his arms, kick his feet and play while safe and secure. Shot this in a quick 10 minute session this evvening. I set up the Bumbo on the couch in the nursery, bounced my on camera flash around til I found nice directional light on the Bumbo, then put Isaac in and shot. Got a handful I like, and let Molly choose the one for today's post.

You can see the also-rans on my primary blog: http://bmcportraits.wordpress.com/
On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#/profile.php?ref=profile&id=100000147498632
or in my Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bmcphoto/

Strobist: On camera SB800 bounced into the corner camera left and behind Isaac. I used a black foam flag on the flash to keep any direct light from falling on Isaac. This gave soft diretional light with no more than a stop difference on the shadow side (which seems about right to me for babies and young children). There was an overhead light above and behind camera position but at f5.6 and 1/200th of a second it barely registered, though it can be seen in the catchlights in his eyse. FEV +0.3 shot with a D300 in manual mode.