Norfolk Woodland Family Photo Shoot

Blyth woods is one of my favourite local woodlands to take families as there are four ancient fallen trees that are such great spots to have photos taken, and are great fun for the kids as I tell them stories about how the dinosaurs knocked them down! The fallen trunks never fail to raise a smile from even the most stubborn of kids so when Janie told me that they wanted a forest backdrop and that her baby was a little older, I knew that this was the perfect destination for a family photo shoot with a young baby. I fired over some examples of this woodland to Janie and she was instantly sold as it's hard not to love the beauty of this spot and the convenience for people who live in Norwich.

Janie contacted me about booking a family photo shoot involving their baby as she had missed the chance to get newborn photos done due to covid. It's a sad but harsh reality of the pandemic and too many of us are missing out on vital life moments, like weddings, funerals, christenings, milestones, birthdays, christmas and countless more sentimental events that we all wish we'd been able to attend. As a lifestyle photographer, it makes me sad to hear of all the things that people have missed or wanted to do, and it's always one of the first topics that comes up in conversation these days - "How was your lockdown?".

Instantly sympathetic to Janie's situation, I got them booked in as soon as was possible to ensure we got the shoot done when her baby was as young as possible! As already mentioned, Janie chose Blyth woods after looking through my portfolio as her and her partner loved the woodland look. With autumn upon us, it was the perfect location for a neutral colour themed family session.

Due to the parents work commitments, we had to meet later in the day so we met at the woods as the sun was setting during golden hour which you can see in some of the images where the sunset is poking through the trees, The day was a little overcast so lighting was not ideal, the lighting was good for portraits in the open, within the forest but due to the overgrown tree canopies, you don't get a huge amount of light that penetrates through the leaves of the tall trees, but with a quick tweak within my DSLR camera, I had everything setup and ready to wrestle that low lighting!

Janie's beautiful little girl was so good during our session and we had such a great time. She was amazed by all of the sights, smells and sounds within the woods and it was beautiful tow atch her bright blue eyes sparkle with wonder as she took in the woodland as we went through our session. I'm so in love with the colours of their outfits, they all coordinated perfectly and the dark red matched perfectly with the autumnal tones within Blyth Woods.

We walked around the forest and found several spots where the lighting was good and the backdrop was stunning, each time stopping for a few photos to ensure that there was a good variety of backdrops. We threw leaves in the air for her and watched her eyes light up as she saw them gracefully fall to the ground - we had so much fun!

We barely stopped laughing or smiling - both Mum and Dad were so great with helping me to get the best out of the session and the images speak for themselves! I'm so in love with our forest session - the colours, the clothing, the babies big blue eyes!

If you're looking for a good spot around Norwich or Norfolk to get those instagram ready woodland photos, look no further than Blyth Woods.

Shooting: To shoot this baby photo shoot session I used a mirrored DSLR with a professional grade full Nikon system.

Lens: For this baby photography session, I used a 24-70mm f.2.8 Nikon Pro Lens

Editing: To edit, I used the widely renowned professional software Adobe Lightroom without exporting into Adobe Photoshop. All adjustments were done in Lightroom by hand with brushes and the new 'select subject' feature from the 2021 update. If you haven't updated your lightroom yet, do! It's so much better and it's a ten minute learning curve to get used to the new software.

Editing Style: The style of the editing for this session is natural warm with a mild matte look in the blacks and a little enhancement to the colours contained in the autumn leaves so that they 'pop'

Colour Correction: This album was edited in a natural warm style with my usual matte blacks, however, there were several adjustments to colours. Yellow was reduced and the hue was changed so that it closely resembled brown to enhance the autumn colours. Greens were subdued to a more natural tone and reds and oranges were nudged up slightly to enhance the leaves .

Beauty Retouching: Gentle and natural looking beauty retouching was performed. Standard retouching was maintained with gentle brushes to whiten teeth and enhance eyes.

Sharpening: These images were sharpened using the monthly subscription service software Adobe Lightroom.

Processing: The images were processed into super resolution and exported using Adobe Lightroom which currently sits at around £20 per month for the basic cheaper package.

Quality: A full 300dpi print quality album was delivered to the client with average file sizes of 15,000k but the images uploaded here are reduced to 1500k to ensure fast loading times with a minimal reduction in visible quality.

Clothing: I wore a standard autumn appropriate outfit with comfy walking shoes.

Time: We were at this location for a total of 60 minutes.

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