I am very honored to be part of a project taken on by some of the finest children’s photographers in the world called The Blog Carousel. Once a month a theme is chosen and each participating photographer creates a blog post based on her interpretation of the theme. This month’s theme is Shadow Play.

I thought this time I would show readers how shadows can be used to create drama and emphasize a subject in portraiture. My subject here is a six week old baby boy. Typically I do this type of shot with newborn babies to also emphasize how small baby is in Dad’s hands. This little guy was never very little. He was a 10 pound 2 ounce newborn! This made the shot a little more challenging to execute, but still adorable.

I took this shot with the final edit in mind. First I draped a black blanket over dad to serve as the background. Next I placed baby on dad’s lap and had dad support him with his hands. With a smaller baby, you could accomplish this with just a black shirt on dad.

To begin the editing process, I take the RAW image into Photoshop. Even with metering for the skin tones, so much black in the frame can throw off the color and tones which I then fix. To create drama and emphasize the baby, I increase the shadows to black for the background. I then desaturate the color and crop. To give the photo depth, I add more shadow by burning just as you would in a dark room with film. Finally I add a tinge of warmth. Voila!

Next stop on the blog carousel is the very talented Anna-Karin Skillen – Baton Rouge & Denham Springs Child & Family Photographer. Please stop by to see her interpretation of the theme, you are going to love it!

For more photos of adorable babies, please visit the portfolio of NJ Baby Photographer Tara McGlinchey.