Austin's Shoot on Black Backdrop

The other day I watched Austin while my friend was at work.



Needing something to keep him, me, and my nephew Jack occupied for a moment (Lucy was napping) - we decided to do a shoot of Austin!  After a quick tutorial, Jack (age 5) actually took some of these photos while I tried to get Austin to laugh... which, I never did. 

 

That's okay.  What baby doesn't need a few dramatic head shots?  I'm not sure why his eyes look so blue in some of these (and not as much in others), but I didn't enhance them or anything... it must just been the reflection of the overcast sky.

 

 Can you tell I've been enjoying my new black backdrop??  I have become even better friends with Picnik.com - the site I use for editing photos.

 

Picnik is super user-friendly and intuitive.  I'm a product of my generation and have a very short attention span when it comes to technical editing.  I can't really be bothered with making layers to edit photos.   

So about Picnik - Google bought it about 2 years ago and is incorporating its features into Google+, a social networking site similar to Facebook, though with some notable improvements.

I am sad, sad, sad to see Picnik's original site closing (April 19th - noooo!) but happy that many of its features have already been incorporated into Google+.  Anyways, there is a feature in Picnik that makes it really easy to black-out any folds of velvet visible in the original photo.

My only beef with the black velvet is that sometimes a fold of it will lie over my little subject's hand, and unless I crop it out, it looks sort of weird.  I need to figure out a way to keep the velvet stretched taut, but nothing's come to me yet.

Enjoy your week!