If you haven’t already read Part I: Tips for Taking Newborn Pictures or Picking The Right Camera and Lens for Baby Photography take a look at those articles and then come back here where we will cover more tips that will help you take great photographs of newborn babies. This article will cover some of the techniques that can be used to take distinctive and modern baby photographs that will stand the test of time.

The first technique is the newborn black and white photograph – newborn baby photographs in black and white are distinctive, timeless, and very easy to take. The main rule to follow to get great black and white baby photographs is to set up your lighting (remember your nursery window is all that is required for great lighting) so that you have the full range of light and dark tonality in your picture. This means that you want to have a histogram which hits both ends of the light/dark range. Your lightest tonalities will be the glint in the babies eyes, and their white skin facing the lighting. The darkest tonality will be the dark of the babies eyes and the skin away from the light.

One question I often here is “Should I take pictures in my camera’s black and white mode? Or take them in color and convert them to black and white?” I definitely recommend leaving your camera in color mode and converting to black and white using Photoshop. Photoshop Elements 6 has made it very easy to convert images to black and white with default settings for different types of black and white scenarios like portraits, landscapes, and architecture. Once you are in the Photoshop Elements editor simply go to “Enhance->Convert To Black and White” and then select the default template for portraits. Then adjust the contrast until you have the perfect balance of over and underexposure in your photograph.

Here is an example of a black and white image that was originally shot in color and then converted using the technique above. This was shot using the Nikkor 1.8D at f2.8 to throw all of the image out of focus other than the close side of the newborn’s face.

Black and White Baby-Nikon D80, Nikkor 1:1.4D, f2.8, 1/40 converted in Photoshop Elements

The second technique that I’ll described is the magical “floating baby” shot. This technique builds on a straightforward black and white photograph by placing the newborn against a black backdrop. For this technique to be used successfully you’ll need to ensure that you have plenty of light illuminating the baby. Again I just use a bright window at my back which is in front of the baby. Then I place the baby on a black sheet which is placed over a stool. This gives the effect of the baby floating in air since you will purposely underexpose the black sheet to avoid that being visible in the final image. Don’t worry if you have difficulty underexposing the sheet and still maintaining the bright white tones on the baby’s skin. You can always touch the image up in Photoshop by carefully tracing the outline of the newborn using a selector tool, then inversing the selection so that you are highlighting the black sheet, and then apply black fill to finish of the effect.

Floating Baby - D80, Nikkor 1:1.8D, f4.5, 1/160th, ISO400