Joshua’s 1st Birthday Invite Photo

Hello there, David here from www.davidpurslow.com

A few months back I went to Focus, a huge trade show for photographers and those in the photography industry.  While I was there I had the great fortune to bump into a fantastic lady photographer called Julie from http://www.cialonephoto.com Julie is a photographer based in New York, USA.   I spent about an hour listening to Julie’s talk about her photography and how she has grown her business.  Some of her idea are mind blowing and I dont know if Pembrokeshire is ready for them just yet - but we will find out.

One of the ideas that really excited me was her “Babies Birthday Cake Photographs” - as you will see below the idea is to shoot a series of images of the “baby” and a birthday cake.  When I told Nikki about these, we instantly knew these would be Joshua’s birthday party invite cover photos.

Here is what the final output ends up like

With this post I will show you exactly whats involved in creating photos like these.

Many of the ideas they have in the United States and Austrailia seem so far removed from what we have over here in the UK and this is one of them.  A babies first birthday portrait or first birthday party photos seem very traditional over here, I want to drag Pembrokeshire, which is my part of the UK into a whole new way of thinking about baby and children’s portraits.   With this in mind we have been getting ready for months to shoot this - I think we were about a month early but then we wanted to use them as personalized invitations to Joshua’s first birthday party.  I think 11 months would have been better than 10 months to shoot the pic and then I am guessing he would have smashed the cake to bits !!!!!

What we have used the pictures for is not what I will be marketing them as.   I have ordered a few photo book’s to take these images, I will post them when we get them.  In general, the 1st Birthday cake photo shoot will be similar to this but will end up as either a 5×5 or 8×8 photo book with between 10 and 20 photos in it or it will be a large framed photo montage with 4 photos at differing stages of cake demolition.  When people think of baby portraits in Pembrokeshire I want these images to be some of the first ones that pop into there minds.

Anyway enough about what we did it and what we aim to do with them, lets get down to how we actually shot the photos. - I have decided to pop this into the photo tips section as I think its great fun for others to shoot photos like these.

First off, a time line was something like this - setup time 1 hour 15 minutes - shooting time 3 minutes 42 seconds and breakdown time of around 25 minutes.

Here is a shot of the equipment used to create the image.

In this photo you can see a background stand (will show you this in action in a second) and a couple of studio lights (you could do this with regular flash’s but you would need 2 or three of them)

The first thing is to setup the background

*** Okay, if you want to continue reading the rest of the story you will need to click here to

I use colourama background paper.  The colour here is Arctic White, The sheet is 9 st wide and 50 feet long (you end up cutting off about 10 feet each time you use it)  The paper is on a roll that slots over the background stand.  The paper has been draped so it creates a gentle slope and not a hard ridge.  This way, you dont know where the floor ends and the walls begin if you know what I mean.

Next you add your lights.  On this setup I used only two lights - I had wanted to use 3 but 1 is away being fixed and I had taken a few on camera flash’s (Nikon SB800’s) to use as remote strobes but had a problem so ended up using just 2.

I positioned 1 big softbox just above and behind where Joshua would be seated and set up another umbrella softbox (I like these because they are quick to setup and move around) - The photos were shot at F5.6 in manual mode so I first set the BIG softbox to F8 - I did this because I wanted to get the background to completly blow out to white or create a hi key effect as we say in the photo world.  I then set up my subject flash and metered that to F5.6  If you look in the shot below, you can see me testing the light using 2 light meters.  I had one on the background and 1 where Joshua would be.

That was the total setup.  I then sat just on the edge of the paper which is about 3 - 4 feet from where Joshua would be.  Knowing this would be a quick shoot (Julie had forwarned me) I decided to shoot this at ISO400 which allows the light to recycle quicker than if I had shot it at ISO100

Nikki then positioned the cake and then put Joshua into a really nappy just because it would look better in the shots.  once I was ready, Nikki placed Joshua infront of the cake and I started to let fly.

A clean Joshua looking at the cake thinking whats this ?

about 9 photos later, we ended up with something like this

You have to shoot quick and I had the camera in constant focus mode with the focus mark on Joshua’s lips the whole time.  This is a messy photo shoot, here are a few more of the photos

and then, just over 3 and a half minutes later, it was all over.

One of the problems with this shoot is that the icing is cold, so when the novilty of smashing up a birthday cake is over, the babies loose interest.  Another problem is that once they have covered themselves in cake, cleaning them up takes time and ends up with you getting all icing over you.

Here is a shot of Nikki picking Joshua up after the shoot.  She had been forewarned to wear old clothes that can get all mucky and covered in cake - remember Joshua has cake on his feet, body, hands, face, side, nappy etc, etc, etc - that means your going to get plastered.

That just left a cake to be cleaned up.

So thats that.

Things to remember

• Makes for a stunning baby portrait - I think the best baby portraits in Pembrokeshire
• Bring a change of clothes for the baby (we just wrapped him in a towel and bathed him at home)
• Bring a change of clothes for the mum or dad
• Bring a towel or 3 to put on your car seat to stop it getting covered in icing
• Bring lots of wet wipes etc
• Shoot the pictures fast as its over in a flash
• Spend the time setting up and make sure your lighting is right before you put the baby down
• Keep shooting - no matter what happens keep shooting

Thats the story of Joshua’s Birthday Party Personalised Invitation

If you would like to have your babies birthday portrait shot by me, drop me an email to david@davidpurslow.com or visit my website at www.davidpurslow.com Remember I am based in Pembrokeshire, West Wales and shoot babies portraits, children and family portraits and weddings.  I travel all over South Wales and the UK for weddings, baby portraits, family portraits etc.

If you have any questions about shooting something like this feel free to post here, I will answer them for you if I can.

Take care,  more soon

bye for now

dp

David Purslow
Photographer
www.davidpurslow.com
07799 666808