This is the third installment in a series about choosing the best Greenville SC newborn photographer for your needs.

The first post talked about the minimum qualifications any newborn photographer should meet.  The second post talked about the qualities you have that might make you a great match for me.   This third post is going to show you how to judge a photographers work.

Why Should You Look at the Quality of Work?

There are four things you can discern by the images in a Greenville SC newborn photographer’s portfolio.  Just from looking at their images, you can learn the photographer’s…

1. skill with a camera and their retouching software
2. skill posing a baby
3. concern for the baby
4. personal style of imagery

Today we’re going to talk about judging the photographers skill with the camera and retouching software.  Next week, I’ll talk about the other three things you’ll be able to see in a photographer’s portfolio.

Skill with a Camera/Retouching Software

Are the images well exposed?

Exposure is the quality of capturing the world in the brightness that our eye sees.  It’s partly a camera skill and partly a lighting skill.

Under-exposed is when an image is too dark with almost no light tones.

Over-exposed is when an image is too light with almost no dark tones.

A perfectly exposed image should have tones ranging from dark to light and looking very much like your eye would perceive the scene.

How Well is the Image Retouched Using Editing Software?

Photoshop (and other retouching software) can be a tricky subject.  It can be used for dramatic effects such turning a piece of pizza into a super model, but more often it’s used for more minor things.

In newborn portraits editing software is used in the following ways.

• to remove red from the newborn’s skin to make it look creamy
• to remove blemishes and peeling skin
• to create the Photoshop Magic that results in those images would be unsafe for baby.
• to apply the photographers own effects that give them their signature style
• to smooth the remaining baby weight from the mother’s middle or face

An Image Case Study

Here’s a little case study.  Zoey didn’t have a whole lot of blemishes, but she does have a raspberry angel kiss on her forehead.  I personally leave these sort of marks unless asked to remove them. I’m not going to subject any of my mothers to pre-Photoshop scrutiny (because most of them didn’t know I’d done it!), however, every other type of edit was done on this image.

 

Post-processing can be not done at all, done tastefully, or overdone.  It’s easy to see when an image has hand nothing done to it, but it’s not always so easy to see an over processed image so I’ll give you an example.  The following image has had too many skin corrections applied making the baby almost orange and washed out and the skin texture looking like a Barbie doll.  The range of contrast in the original image has been removed.

 

Compared to the original, we can see that the over-processed image hides the rich contrast/details and makes the baby look plastic.

I hope that you’ve learned a bit about judging your potential newborn photographers skill with her camera and her retouching software from this post.  I’ll be covering the three other areas that you should judge a photographer’s work by in a later post.

If you love what you’ve seen of my work and would love to work with me, contact me today to get your due date on my calendar!