This weeks vendor is Kake Queen. I love cool cakes and I do think its the latest cool thing for parties to have a really awesome cake. Here is one of my favorites of course!

Check out their facebook page at Kake Queen Facebook and please leave them a message and tell them I sent ya! They are offering all my readers a Free Dozen Cupcakes with any Cake order!

Some Important Dates to keep in mind for now:

Last Date For Regular Sessions- Tuesday November 16th
Last Date To Order to guarantee holiday delivery-November 29th
Only sessions that will be scheduled in December are Newborns. Pre-booking is strongly suggested so if you are expecting and due in the fall please contact me to let me know.

To view the 2011 Holiday Mini Session click here:
http://www.emaphotography.com/minisession/holiday2011.jpg

Please remember the session retainer is due at the time you book your session in order to hold your date. Visit my website for more information on current rates and polcies www.emaphotography.com

Newborn Safety has been a hot topic amongst photographers lately.     With a huge trend in capturing newborns these days,  there has also been a trend on pushing ourselves to be more creative.   When the reality is that most parents just want cute shots of their precious baby.   All too much lately many of us have gasped at watching babies be put in glass jars (that could easily break) or suspended in mid air from a tree branch or stick with no spotter.  Often these shots are done by an untrained photographer.   Babies are not props and one should never risk hurting them to attempt to get a “cool” shot.   Babies safety should ALWAYS come first.  Even if you “think” they seem safe.   When searching for a custom photographer for your newborn,  I strongly suggest doing research and choosing a photographer who has plenty of experience when shooting a newborn.  As the saying goes,  you really can never be too safe when dealing with a baby.   I know my clients appreciate the extra time I take to make sure of that as well.

Most of these shots can be done by doing a “composite”.     What this means is simply combinging parts of 2 images to make 1 image.   In the sample below you will see what I mean.   Babies can’t really balance on their own.   Their heads are too heavy and often this puts excessive weight on their tiny wrists.   I know many of us cringe at seeing a baby propped up on their elbows,  heads on the tops of their hands and it looks like their poor little wrists are purple.    In the sample I created below you will see that I had Mom hold the babies head as to not put excessive weight on the hands and to keep the baby balanced and then in the second shot she held her arms so that I could get a clean shot of the babies head…and again keeping safety my main concern.   With this shot we could have attempted a “ok, let go”  but then chances are the baby would have toppled over and that is just not safe.

Then I simply merged the two in to a composite and with a little photoshop magic I then had a final product such as this:

As I said,   I feel very strongly that I’d rather have the baby safe then attempting to get a shot just to look “cool”.    In this one below,  parents wanted a shot with the baby on the scale.   If you’ve ever seen one of these hanging scales,  you’d know that they are very wobbly and to put a baby on this and suspend it in mid air is well,  just plain irresponsible.   So here is what we did:

We took 3 separate shots.

And again with a little photoshop magic,  here is our end result:

Sometimes all an image needs is just a little bit of photoshop.   In this image the baby didn’t want to keep upright (and rightfully so which is fine) so mom put her finger on their head to keep them steady.

I hope you enjoyed this article!   Please remember,  babies are this little once and capturing them should always be done with the upmost care.

Please click on this link below to view Lauri Bakers article on “Volunteering your talent vs. Working for free” a must read article for any photographer!

http://www.emaphotography.com/blog/2010/12/giving-is-awesome-2010-nominations-being-accepted/

http://www.emaphotography.com/blog/2010/12/giving-is-awesome-2010-nominations-being-accepted/

A few have asked some questions so wanted to address them here.   Yes,  you can nominate a family member, in fact I encourage it as who knows them better!   Here are just a few more types of people who can be nominated:

*someone who’s experienced a tragedy, fallen on hard times, is struggling to stay afloat, is raising kids while holding down more than one job, or is volunteering selflessly despite extenuating personal circumstances.

Please email me if you have any questions!  info@emaphotography.com

Become a fan of my facebook page to see the “12 days of Christmas” specials I will be posting.  One a day beginning on December 12th

Join here:  http://www.facebook.com/babyphotographer

Also,  please remember that ALL holiday orders are due no later then November 28th in order to be guaranteed delivery before the holidays.   I can not guarantee that they will be back in time if they are placed after this date and I will not be placing any orders after December 5th until after the new year.

and because a post without a photo is so boring… my sweet girl turned 8 this week.  I was happy to find a spare hour to do a quick session with her