Milk bath - with baby this time!

[stardesigns]

Hello again [emoji112]

So I've posted a couple of times for some cc and I've received so much help! I'd like to think that my recent work shows how much I have been taking on board!

Today, I tried a milk bath shoot with my youngest babe. I'd like to think it came out well, however her squishy face always looks perfect to me, and I'm still in awe at how awesome my bathroom now smells!

I tried to time this so I would get the best of the natural light, so I shot this at around 1-2 this afternoon.

 

[Iren]

Love it! Baby looks so content
In the first picture i would slightly boost exposure and whites to brighten it up.

 

[juggler]

I've seen no end of milk bath shots but never with a baby before!

I appreciate the effort you've gone to but there are a couple of issues: The milk looks blue-grey not white - and neither is sharp, mainly due to motion blur I think.

I'd spot meter off both the milk and the skin, aiming to get the milk to read +2 ish and the skin +1 ish (your taste may vary). And I'd set the white balance off the milk and turn up the ISO to give a minimum shutter speed of at least 1/200.

Sorry to be so negative, I do admire the effort but I reckon you should practice in similar light on a white rug with flowers around first - and then give it another go. I look forward to seeing the results!

edit: what I didn't say was these are technically much better than the last set you posted. Onwards and upwards!

 

[stardesigns]

Love it! Baby looks so content
In the first picture i would slightly boost exposure and whites to brighten it up.

Thank-you! Took one very big feed and a long undisturbed nap before hand but it most certainly paid off! [emoji5]

I've seen no end of milk bath shots but never with a baby before!

I appreciate the effort you've gone to but there are a couple of issues: The milk looks blue-grey not white - and neither is sharp, mainly due to motion blur I think.

I'd spot meter off both the milk and the skin, aiming to get the milk to read +2 ish and the skin +1 ish (your taste may vary). And I'd set the white balance off the milk and turn up the ISO to give a minimum shutter speed of at least 1/200.

Sorry to be so negative, I do admire the effort but I reckon you should practice in similar light on a white rug with flowers around first - and then give it another go. I look forward to seeing the results!

edit: what I didn't say was these are technically much better than the last set you posted. Onwards and upwards!

I've thought the same, I've seen lots of pregnancy milk shoots, which one day I would like to try! ( haven't got access to a big enough bath so that will have to be a kiddies pool outside kind of job, which I'm excited to try!)

I tried a shoot a few days back without baby just to see if I could get the milk balance and I was advised to maybe try some milk powder this time, which whitened it quite a bit but I agree, it's still looking pretty blue, and I haven't helped with editing, however I have improved the picture, believe it or not! I found it so hard to get the right balance so that it wasn't exposed for to long causing motion blur, but trying to make it long enough so the image wasn't completely binnable (however I did get plenty of them[emoji85]) I think I massively threw myself in the deep end by trying this with a baby first, but this really is all my bathtub would allow.
I think my first issue is finding the right "recipe" for this first, and it seems everyone wants to go for different looks so they're countless recipes. Last time I used whole milk, however this time I used skimmed which in the flesh there was a very visible difference, not to sure how well pictures reflect that.
I will definitely be giving it another go though, I had so much fun taking these! Thank-you again!

 

[juggler]

I think I massively threw myself in the deep end by trying this with a baby first

You certainly did!!! Ambition and vision is good but you're definitely making life difficult for yourself.
Perhaps some explanations of why things went a bit wrong might be useful?

I'm guessing that the camera's metering will have seen a large expanse of white and assumed it should be a midtone grey - hence why it's underexposed.
The automatic white balance will have done something similar and guessed at this blueish shade. The camera doesn't know that it's a bathful of milk that needs to come out near pure white.
Lastly, there's not enough light to capture a moving child at whatever ISO and shutter speed you used. In automatic mode the camera will limit the maximum ISO it will shoot at. You need to change or override that, or add some light (and that's a whole different learning curve).

I reckon you could usefully spend a while on the basics - exposure (i.e. aperture, shutter speed, ISO), white balance & focusing - with a static subject before adding both a perky baby and a bath in dim light into the mix. fwiw I test stuff on a teddy. So do numerous others.

Here's an exercise for you.. take a shot of a piece of white card. Make it come out nearly black. Then make it come out virtually white. (No processing allowed!)
Repeat the exercise at a variety of apertures without changing the lighting.
Then repeat again at a variety of shutter speeds without changing the lighting.

If you can already do that then cool. If not then you absolutely need to nail it before you'll get more consistent results with complex setups.

 

[boyfalldown]

As well as Simon's well thought through comments I would consider doing some skin work and tiding up a little on that score. Now that's a potentially contentious issue, but have you ever seen a good newborn photo without skin work

 

[Phil V]

. Now that's a potentially contentious issue, but have you ever seen a good newborn photo without skin work

You're right, but until we have a sharp shot to begin with there's little point in skin processing.

To help with light / shutter speed though...
I reckon though from the eyes this could be lit with an on camera flash pointing straight behind the camera with a simple Tupperware diffuser as the bath appears to be surrounded by white tiles.

 

[Alastair]

Today, I tried a milk bath shoot with my youngest babe. I'd like to think it came out well, however her squishy face always looks perfect to me, and I'm still in awe at how awesome my bathroom now smells!

With anything involving milk.. reserve judgement of the smell until a couple of days have passed..

Forget the "natural light" hair shirt so beloved of the lifestyle photographers, you don't have enough available to make it easy for yourself - you end up compromising with the exposure choices available to you. If you've got a white ceiling (or even better white walls too) bouncing a flash off the ceiling will help you enormously.