One Month In: Photographing

Can you believe this guy here is one month??


I know I can't! It seems like he was just born yesterday,but obviously I'm delusional right? A lot has taken place this month and this week I plan to tell all with you.

Picture Perfect

I took up this picture challenge where I document his growth/appearance. Even though I totally screwed over the first week picture, I think I have gotten the hang of it since then. Here are his progress photos.





For the first week I was a day late and it was hard trying to catch him while he was awake.On top of that, he wouldn't stop crying so I did what I could.

The second week was by far the easiest week ever!! He cooperated like he was a pro at taking pictures

Now the third week, that's an entirely different story. Pretty much he wouldn't stop crying, wasn't up during the day and if he was, he didn't want me to put him down or move from underneath him. So I basically took his 4 weeks picture and 3 weeks picture on the same day. Hopefully he didn't have too much of a growth spurt this week. He also wouldn't stop moving while taking these two photos so I did the best I could.  

The Process

Each week, I tried to choose a different background and let me tell you this is hard if you don't want to spend any money. (I still can't get over the first week picture as a total bust, hopefully I will forgive myself one day). Luckily, I have a lot of comforters that I can choose from throughout the house and when I run out of comforters, I can just go through some sheets. Don't judge me, it's free. I thought about purchasing some fabric, but eventually I realized how broke I was and how I didn't want to go asking for things when I can just make do what I have.

Overall, I like the way the sheets look better. 

Once the background is picked, it's time to let some light in. I chosed to either let up one or both of my blinds so that my pictures have the most light possible. I've recently learned that the less light you have and the higher you turn your ISO up on your camera, the more noise you have in your pictures. So I've been trying to keep my ISO in between so that I can have enough light to get the best quality of photos. I didn't discover that until the second week of photographing him though.


Lately, I've been taking his pictures in his crib because the light is more even there. The first picture I took on the bed and you can see the unevenness of the light. (Can you see all the peeling also? I'm glad that process is over). Did I mention I moved my bed? It's underneath my faith picture and his crib is now on the wall where my bed used to be.



Okay, so where was I? Oh yeah...

In total I probably ended up taking around twenty pictures. I then pull them up on the computer in Photoshop and see which one is the winner. 

If you are wondering what camera I use, it's the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS

Editing

I don't take a lot to my photos, basically because I haven't figured out all the tricks yet, but I'm slowly learning. I mainly just adjust the brightness and, if needed to, add vibrance to the photos as my editing trick.

For the circle, I use the ellipse tool. I then color the shape by picking a color in the fabric comforter or just picking a color I like if there are no colors that pop in the comforter. I then blend the shape as if it's a part of the shirt using overlay or linear light, basically any of the options that doesn't drown out the color but make it not look like a shape a part of a shirt.



Next is text. I add the number of weeks and the word weeks by using the Text tool and keeping it the color of the shirt. The font for the number is always forever while the font for weeks is century gothic. I also change the opacity level for the number, if needed, to make it blend more onto the shirt.

And that's about all it takes. I'm looking forward in seeing how big he gets as time passes. Right now his shirt size he has on is a 3-6 months, if you are wondering why it's so big on him. I'm wondering how long it will be until he can't fit it anymore since he is such a small little fellow.

If you have any questions just drop a comment below and I will be happy to answer any of them!



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