I recently had a session with a young couple and their newborn son (nine weeks). This is one of my favorite images. I really feel it captures the closeness of mother and child. I lit it with a single speedlight and umbrella behind and to the side. When shooting I was a little concerned that the exposure was going to be a little dark, but I didn’t want to interrupt things by rigging up a second light.
Thinking I could merge the exposures, I upped the f-stop to get a little more detail in her face. Then I laid the image with the face detail above the original in Photoshop. I aligned the two (the best I could), erased all but the face and dropped the opacity of the new layer so it didn’t overwhelm the original. This is the result…I think it turned out pretty well.
