P#14: A Peaceful Picture of a Baby Sleeping

Photographer vs. Mother

Vik Orenstein: This picture of a baby sleeping is my daughter Abbie when she was about four weeks old. There is a story behind this one, about when I became a mom and not just a photographer.

When I was both a mom and a photographer on the shoots with my daughter, I got really, really neurotic. I forgot all of my own rules and I got really uptight and was driving myself and everybody in the studio crazy. (click the image for a larger version)

This is the first studio shot that I did of my daughter. She was four weeks old. My mother brought her into the studio for me and she was just sound asleep. I had envisioned all these pictures with beautiful catch lights in her eyes, and her looking if not into the camera at least near the camera, which is about all you can expect at that age usually.

I was working just my darnedest to try to wake her up. Finally my mother just took her life into her own hands and said, "Vik, you always talk about going with the flow and you stare at her when she's sleeping all the time. Why don't you just take some sleeping shots?" It was just like a light bulb went off over my head.

I relaxed for the rest of the shoot, and we got some beautiful sleeping shots. To this day, they're still some of my favorites.

Touching it Up

Audri Lanford: Absolutely. How did you get the border?

Vik Orenstein: That's a little Photoshop, post. It's not in camera. It's something that you do in the editing process after you shoot.

I think I probably did that one by hand with brushes, with Photoshop brushes. There are a number of fun templates that you can buy if you go online. That can really enhance an image, creative treatments, borders, or black and white conversions, sepia tone conversions, and things like that.

Audri Lanford: I noticed this picture is in black and white. Several of the others are as well. I take it you enjoy black and white.

Vik Orenstein: I love black and white. I think if I had to pick just one artistic treatment for the rest of my life, black and white would be it.

Audri Lanford: I agree with you, I love black and white too. But what is it about black and white you like so much?

Vik Orenstein: I think it just allows you to see the essence of a subject more -- or see it better or more clearly. Sometimes it seems like color, especially the way we tend to do color nowadays because we're so used to coming from analog days when the colored film was super saturated and even brighter than it is in real life.

A lot of times color is just a kind of a moot point. It is immaterial. The thing that you really want to see in the portrait is much clearer to the eye when you have a black and white portrait. The tonal range is really beautiful.

When you have a really well done black and white portrait, it's more beautiful than any direct color.

In Closing

It may have taken Vik a while to settle the inner war between her "photographer self" and her "mother self", but the end result of this picture of the baby sleeping is a beautiful outcome.