TOP Tips things to remember

make the most of your newborn photo shoot with our essential techniques

Compositing your images

at times, you might want to make a composite from two or more shots. maybe you have one shot where the face is perfect but the background is creased, while in another the backdrop is clean. as long as both shots are in rough alignment, piecing them together shouldn’t be too tricky. open both images in photoshop and make a rough selection of the clean area with the lasso tool. right-click it and feather by 20 pixels, then copy (cmd/ctrl+c) and paste in place (cmd/ ctrl+shift+v) into the other image. hit cmd/ ctrl+t to transform, then use the box to fine-tune the positioning. If necessary, add a layer mask and paint black to hide parts of the newly added layer.

01 Posing twins

Posing is often the biggest challenge, as newborns lack the strength to hold themselves up. Plan your poses but be prepared to improvise. If necessary, ask a parent to hold the babies in place, as we did. Try to hide the arm from the frame, or clone it out later.

02 head towards the light

People look more natural if lit from slightly above, as this is how we’re used to seeing light falling on them from the sky. This applies even if the subject is lying down, so angle the head towards the window and feet away slightly, so light falls on the head from above.

03 details and scale

Detail shots can help to tell the story, and are easy compared to trickier wider portraits. It’s especially nice if you can include a sense of scale, by comparing the parent’s hands with the baby’s tiny fingers or toes. A black-and-white conversion is a good choice here.

04 Pin-sharp eyes

When the plane of focus is very shallow, we need to focus precisely on the closest eye, so move your focus point. Try to get the twins’ eyes on the same plane of focus. If not lined up, we can shoot two frames to ensure both sets of eyes are sharp, and combine later.

05 modest Poses

Think about how to pose the babies to hide their private parts. This can be a challenge, especially if they flail their legs around. Gently move the legs to cover things up. If necessary, shoot several frames from a similar position and piece them together later.

06 retouch spots

A brief retouching job helps polish things off and hide distractions. Use Photoshop’s Spot Healing tool to remove small spots and marks, and switch to the Clone tool, set to 20% opacity, to gently smooth out rough patches or creases in the material.