A few days ago I mentioned that I'd explain the baby project I've been working on in a bit more detail, not least because I'm aware that quite a few of you are getting more than a bit bored with baby shots ;-)
Anyway, the project we're working on is a book on baby photography, commissioned by Ilex Press. The book is organised into various sections, around 60% of which are primarily based around the photographs and some descriptive text (and organised into spreads such as 'family outing', 'brothers and sisters', 'first steps', and so on). The remainder of the book covers various post-processing and technical topics including things like 'on camera lighting', 'planning a shoot', 'converting to black and white' and so on, all of which include one or more photographs and a set of accompanying screen grabs. Today's image will be included in one of the technical sections entitled 'Favourite things montage'.
So far, we've managed to complete almost two-thirds of the book, and the final deadline is March 14th. In total the book will include over 300 images (photographs and screen grabs) and 30,000+ words of text, and we will have had around six or seven weeks to get it all together ... which isn't all that long. And that's why I haven't had time to shoot anything else.
Anyway, we're just about on target, though there may be some seriously late nights as we approach the 14th.
As for this shot: it's a composite of three images, all of which were produced in the same way.
I did think about buying one of those curved plastic studio platforms, but they're quite expensive, so this was shot using a large piece of white cardboard (which cost £1.99), held in a curve by two pieces of string (which cost 49 pence). The lighting was a combination of window light (from our north-facing bedroom window) and flash, bounced from the ceiling. All three images were adjusted to ensure that the background was pure white then they were combined into the final image.
