August, 2016 - Victoria Ashman Photography

22/08/201602/11/2016

Etsy Shop Digital Backdrops

Here are the digital backdrops I’ve created over the last month. I’ve used a few for myself, for my own galleries, and I’m sure I will be using the red sledge Christmas backdrops very soon! (My Christmas Shoots start in September.) I’m updating and adding to my Etsy shop each week, and I’m really enjoying the process.

I started doing the digital backdrops after one of my newborn shoots. My clients desperately wanted a certain setup, which I said was of course no problem. It wasn’t a complicated set up. The first hour of the shoot was a breeze and the newborn slept like a dream. We did the beanbag pictures, which all went smoothly. The beanbag pictures are flow posing the baby on their back, side and tummy and then we did the parent and baby images. For what ever reason, it could have been wind! she woke up and didn’t want to do any more pictures. But I hadn’t done the setup the clients wanted! I knew we’d already got great images in the first half of the session and I didn’t want to upset or distress the baby in any way. So we called it a day. After the shoot I photographed the setup without the baby and then was able to composite an image (from one of the earlier beanbag shots) When the parents saw the setup they bought the picture and were very happy. My brain then started to whirl, if for whatever reason this happened again, I could just composite the baby from the beanbag into a prop shot. It’s been fun creating digital backdrops, and I have many more ideas!

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/AuraDigitalBackdrops?ref=hdr_shop_menu

white background and brown long bowl — Digital backdrop, Newborn dark wooden bowl

red sledge 1 — Digital Backdrop, Red sledge, snowy background.

red sledge 1 with baby — Example of what the digital backdrop can look like… composited baby onto the red sledge.

red sledge with teddy and baby — Example of what the digital backdrop can look like… composited baby on the sledge with the teddy behind

19/08/201624/08/2016

Newborn Photo Shoot with Azari

A wonderful newborn photo shoot, with the lovely Azari. I’ve been photographing this family for the past couple of years and they’re all great. The oldest Jai even helps me out, and a very good photography assistant he is too! Azari slept the entire shoot, so we were able to achieve quite a few poses. I love this image with the bonnet. It was one of the pictures chosen to go up on Mum’s wall, one of three 20″ x 16″‘s sized prints. I love them all, but when I look at this picture I find it very gentle and calming. Azari was premature by a few weeks, and we actually did the shoot very close to her due date.

Harriett chose all black and white prints and I must say I do love black and whites. They are just so timeless. The printer I use is a canon ipf8400 and it prints wonderful pictures. The inks are pigment inks too, which means they will last up to 75 years. So, wonderfully, maybe these prints will be passed down to Azari’s grandchildren.

We did pictures of Azari on her own and with her two siblings. (I always do the sibling images first) Aston is now the middle child, and at 18 months old found the shoot a bit confusing. We managed to get a beautiful shot of the three of them though, and I’m so pleased we did. Sibling shots can be the most challenging in a newborn photo shoot. This is because, not only are you trying to get a good picture with all that entails, i.e. thinking about the lighting, posing, details. But also safety has to be paramount. In this instance, my go to pose for siblings which is lying them down, didn’t work. So instead I was able to put Aston on the white wooden chair and Jai to his side, holding his sister. It is a beautiful picture, I’m very proud of it, and Mum loves it.

9906 azari — Newborn baby Azari, she was still very flexible, and was very comfortable in this position.

11/08/201624/08/2016

Ballet Photo Shoot

I have just photographed a ballet photo shoot. Wonderfully, for me, it was with my beautiful goddaughter Rosie!

I did a photo shoot a few months ago with a three year old little girl. She was twirling around in her floaty dress and I got a series of photographs. I put them together in a panoramic print, a bit like the picture below and it looked lovely. I wanted to try it again! So, Rosie and I had fun trying out different movements. Rosie showed me what she had been taught in her ballet lessons, and we did a variety of different dance movements. But, I just loved this series of ballet steps, showing Rosie twirling from left to right. When I was a little girl I had a Swan Lake musical jewellery box, which I loved. I think this was probably the inspiration!

I posted this picture on my facebook page, and I had such a great response. So, I decided that I am going to offer this as one of my shoots. The client would pay for the shoot and print, and then after the shoot you get a printed picture in either a 12″ x 6″ or a 16″ x 8″. We could apply this to little girls in floaty dresses dancing, hula hooping or boys doing football skills or we could incorporate any number of hobbies. Or we could just do the ballet photo shoot, it is great fun.