‘Hallie’s 1st Birthday Session’

A couple of times a year we do a model call to try out new ideas. I love model call sessions as I can have a real experiment. This particular session I decided to shoot in natural light. I have always shot with my Elincrom flashlight as it gives me consistent lighting and shadows. I can also count on my images being super sharp. 

I suppose I have always shied away from natural light because it can be so unpredictable. But with a free of charge session I can take these risks.

As I was setting up for the session, the sun was beaming through the window onto our set. I pulled over our voile curtain and it was just a vision. I planned on just shooting part of the session in natural light just so I’d tried, but as I checked up on the images on the back of my camera, they were just perfection. I ended up shooting the whole session in natural light.

I also couldn’t have picked a cuter more beautiful model to help me create this amazing gallery!!! She worked the camera like no other and loved the cake too.

I was worried how my preset and editing techniques were going to work with different lighting, but they were so easy to edit. The shadows and lighting were just perfect, and trust me, if we get that bit right, editing is a breeze! Most people won’t realise how important lighting is when it comes to photography, I would actually say it’s more important than what the model is doing. Whilst snapping away your little ones, in the background, my brain is working on the perfect lighting. As well as entertaining your baby, positioning them, lifting up fallen sleeves, wiping dribble and snot and chatting to mum and dad….my head is just screaming LIGHTING LIGHTING LIGHTING!!!

I had got my crafty hands on that week too and made some new tiebacks and flower crowns for the studio. Hallie was having none of it and wanted to go au naturel (mama tried really hard haha).

Anyway, the images tell a better story than I could type up, so please please take a good look through the below gallery and share this session, because I can see natural light being our ‘new thing’ at Tilly White.

Enjoy