Welcome to the World, Baby Tejan!
At 5 weeks old, Tejan (pronounced: tay-jen) is very alert and active. His eyes were open for a good part of the shoot and he knew how to track the sound of his mom’s voice.
You heard it here first: Tejan will be a heart-breaker when he grows up! He and his brother, Sohan, both have amazing eyes! Once they learn to use them (ie, batting them, looking deeply into others’ eyes), the ladies will be in trouble! 😉
Onto the photoshoot…
Last minute, we changed locations from an outdoor woodsy park to their home!
The main reason for this location change was because of the weather. We wanted to do some naked newborn shots and well, I couldn’t have Tejan naked outdoors when the weather report quoted that the temperature “feels like 37”! So, indoor it was!
We took a little time to set up a few areas of their home since they hadn’t planned on doing a photoshoot there. Last week when I spoke to Rashmi (I also did maternity portraits of her, so check her out in my Bellies gallery), she didn’t think her house was suitable for the photoshoot because of low light and they hadn’t remodeled yet. HA! It was perfect. We just needed to move a few things here and there, get a little creative, tweak a few camera settings and voila!
They also had a good size yard with large trees. I found this beautiful tree with red berries! We couldn’t have found a nicer backdrop if we went to the original park location. Plus, all the photos will now have a deeper meaning because they were taken at their home, Tejan’s first home.
We did half the photoshoot indoors to capture shots of Tejan in his “birthday suit” and half outdoors in their yard. For the indoor photos, I had to use my external flash to provide more light. Though I prefer natural light, there are times flash is necessary. I also bumped up the ISO on my camera to make up for the low light, so some of the images look a little grainy. I, personally, like the grainy look. It creates more of a mood than a sharp, crisp shot. And sometimes mood is what you want.
I had so many Favorites. Here are a few to share…
Sometimes I’d look into Tejan’s eyes and see light brown, but sometimes, they looked slate blue!
Sat is great in front of the camera and with his kids. He knew how to bring out special moments with them.
See what I mean?!!
I like this photo (below) because of all the shapes. I like the curves of Sat’s cheeks and nose against Tejan’s profile. Then you see Tejan’s round head with his perfectly oval ear.
I also like the composition where you only see Sat’s face and that his head is to one corner of the photo, so the attention is more on Tejan and his tender moment with his dad.
Okay, so maybe I’m giving up the farm, but these are 2 of my favorite ‘parent with baby’ photos from today (below)!
In Rashmi’s photo, I love that Tejan is holding her as much as she is holding him! And look at the smile on Tejan’s face! He is happy as a clam in his mom’s arms!
In Sat’s photo, I love the way Tejan is sitting upright with eyes wide open. You’d almost think he was older than 1 month! And of course I love that Tejan is naked and the contrast that it creates against Sat’s crisp white shirt. I also love the lighting (this was indoors) where one side of Sat is dark.
Feet are my favorite part of newborns! OMG, look how tiny they are… and those itty bitty toes!
I wanted to capture one of Tejan’s tiny parts: his hand/fingers. But I wanted to do it in a nontraditional way by not just doing a close up.
Instead, I captured Sat’s ENTIRE hand, which creates the comparison. And I kept Tejan’s face in the background, so you can see just enough of him to know he is peacefully sleeping.
I also like that his little belly is sticking out from under his sweater. Tee hee.
This was one of the last shots we did.
It was actually very hard to orchestrate because either Tejan was moving or crying (yes, you’re naked and left alone again… poor little guy!) or Sohan was moving or the parents were responding to Sohan moving! (Sohan was so well-behaved the entire time, but I think he was finally getting restless. Oh, and his dad was hiding a piece of candy in his hand, so that made Sohan get up.)
This is one of the ones that I like because the family in the background looks great and Tejan is relaxed and sleeping.
If you look closely, Tejan almost looks like he’s grimacing a little, but I think all baby facial expressions are great and important to capture!
I look forward to seeing Tejan again, and watching him grow as I have with Sohan!