Every now and then I like to give a little glimpse into what goes into a session after we say goodbye and you’re anxiously awaiting your finished proofs. My work doesn’t end until I feel like I have a solid set of images that you and your family will love. When working with groups of two or more (and especially with babies!), us photographers sometimes have to work a little photoshop magic to get everyone looking just right. Below is a great example of why I often shoot several shots from the same position.. it makes swapping heads so much easier!

For this particular family, I actually have several family shots that I love and have already edited. But after passing by this image several times, I knew I had to use it because mom is just looking too stinkin’ cute! So this is the shot that I will use as my “main” picture:

As you can see, mom is looking completely adorable, where dad and baby aren’t at their 100% best. But this is no problem, because the very next frame that I shot was a total winner for dad. Score!

Now this time, mom and baby aren’t 100%, so instead of choosing a shot where one or two of the subjects look just okay, I’m going to take dad out of the above picture, and put him in my main shot. But now it’s time for baby. He was a bit trickier because he was fixated on something to my left (probably my awesome mom who was making funny noises and playing with stuffed fish to get his attention!), so to get him to look directly at the camera, I had to readjust my position a little bit.

Oh boy! Look at that eye contact! Lukily this shot was still close enough to my original perspective, that it wasn’t too difficult to add. After about twenty minutes of tinkering, I finally got dad and baby morphed into my original image. Once I was happy with the result, I went ahead and did my edits and we ended up with this lovely family portrait to commemorate little Grady’s first trip to the beach!