Qwyn's Pre-Birthday Simple DIY Pictorial

Anyone who had tried photographing babies would vouch that it is not an easy task. I stopped offering photography services when I got pregnant but continued to take photos of my baby and the family. An now that our youngest niece is turning one, it is time for another pre-birthday photoshoot.

Qwyn Amari is my second brother's firstborn. Her birthday is on October 21. She is a daddy's girl as whenever she sees my brother, she'd be calling him "daddy daddy" and won't stop until my brother would carry her.

My sister-in-law prepared all the necessary accessories for this quick do-it-yourself pictorial with no lighting equipment needed, only natural sunlight, it was also during the golden hour, at four in the afternoon.

We went to the same place where we took photos of Matti's 8th month. We noticed that the place now has been discovered by some people, the grasses were being pulled out in blocks, I believe they were trying to sell the grasses, a huge chunk of the area has been bald now, I hope the grasses will grow to that area soon. Or perhaps the landowner is responsible for that, I am not sure.

Anyway, we didn't waste any moment because the sun was just at its right position to take photos. It rained that morning so the soil is somehow still damp but it was fine. We brought a white comforter but also placed a native blanket to protect the white cloth.

With that, we just placed Amari in the comforter and started entertaining her. She was still looking fine at this point, no sign yet of being bored or what. She was feeling the hairband with the crown that has a number 1 in it. I wasn't able to ask the mom if this was ordered through shopee but I suppose it was. It's pink and it's cute.

The most challenging part of taking baby photos is to make them smile. While I didn't have this problem with Matti because we can easily entertain him to smile and look at the camera, it was different with Amari.

She got bored right away and whatever we do to make her smile didn't work. Her mother had been doing the usual things she does to make this little girl smile but nope, she started to show that she's not into this. She started taking off her crown, I mean the headband.

We asked her to look up to the camera as I was trying to take photos of her crown and her cute tutu.

It took a while before she could look at me. She already had taken the headband out before looking up.

And how can this girl not smile when we were all singing, persuading her to give us a smile, even playing some of her favorite Cocomelon video songs on the phone just so she could give us her previous smile, but to no avail.

So, we proceed. Gecell, Qwyn's mom had ordered this letter standees somewhere, it got a crown on the letter O. So, we took shots of Qwyn and each letter.

It looked like, she was just waiting for the balloons! She finally smiled when we gave her the balloons. Actually, the original plan was for her to hold the floating balloons but we couldn't find any shops here in our town which offer helium so we have to use the balloon sticks instead.

But we were unlucky as some of the balloons had popped! We believe it was because of the spiky grasses. It was not a good idea to leave the balloons on the ground.

We were almost done, in shooting babies and toddlers, I use burst mode just so I could get every single reaction from the child. On that photo above, she laughed when we gave her a balloon stick but she was not looking at the camera, it took a lot of memory card writing before she finally look into the lens but this time, she wasn't smiling anymore!

My sister-in-law said Qwyn might be tired already and is just not in the mood. So Qwyn changed clothes and lastly, we took a photo of her with the letter standees and the remaining balloons. Out of the many balloons, only two survived, there were no more white and pink ones.

Lastly, Qwyn can't stand on her own for a long time so this photo above was edited because her mother was standing right next to her just to make sure the baby's safety. It took just a few seconds before Qwyn started moving away from the standees and almost fell but her mother was there to the rescue.

I took the photo above with the mom and another photo without them on the frame so it was easy to use the masking method to hide the mother. That's all for today folks! Images were taken using Sony A7iii and a 35mm lens.