I am editing a newborn session I had over the weekend and am struck yet again by how different it is to edit these pictures. I strive for a “natural” look;  I don’t want the baby to look “over-processed”. However labor, the elements, hormones and those sharp little infant nails are not kind to baby’s skin. I find babies often need quite a bit of work to give them the look we expect of a newborn – fresh, smooth, dewy, new. . .

I thought I would post a few before & after examples to illustrate what goes into editing newborn pictures.

This little guy is totally cute and a champ at sleeping while I posed him. He was a little older (almost 3 weeks) and had some acne and flaky skin that needed to be addressed. I was able to smooth his skin, getting rid of the flaky quality as well as removing the couple of scratches he had and the acne on his nose.

I find with newborns there tends to be more uneven skin tone/color. Here, this guy had a yellow cast to his skin in the “T” zone while around that was more magenta. I evened this out for the final product.

Sometimes I am so focused on the baby I miss things, like the blanket being wrinkled! Luckily this can be fixed as well. BTW – I knit this hat. Isn’t it cute? I must make another!

Let me start by saying that I don’t normally take my child to a session. It just so happened that I was photographing my sister-in-law and her family. After their shoot we wanted to get a picture of all the cousins, so mid-way through my SIL’s shoot my husband stopped by the our kids. What happened next was hilarious and only made better by the fact it was caught “on film”.

BTW – I love how in the first picture you can already tell they see my son’s approach. . .and “swan dive” is probably the best way to describe what he did. Luckily no one was hurt; it was good for a laugh.

I can’t believe what I received today in the mail box. Among some other things that I will blog about tomorrow, I received these four marketing items I ordered. Wow – I just LOVE the way they turned out!  They are 8×8 inch metallic prints on black styrene to make them sturdy.

Special thanks to Michele of Pinkletoes4Photographers for the awesome templates.