Worthington Photography Blog

Baby Alannah at 3 weeks

On October 3rd of this year we received news that Alannah Marie Simmons was born to Erin and Eddy Simmons weighing 7 pounds, 7 ounces. I couldn't wait to meet her since her announcement included a picture of a newborn with a beautiful, full head of black hair... definitely Eddy's little girl.

While I am generally not a big fan of ubiquitous studio portraiture, we had good reason to bust out the black backdrop for Alannah. When Eddy's oldest daughter Maddie was born, he had studio pics taken with her when she was 2 weeks old. Its amazing how much Alannah looks like her sister at this age so we thought it would be fun to try and reproduce Maddie's picture. This is pretty much the exact same pose and they look like almost the exact same kid, I wish I had a copy of the other photo for comparison:


Then we took advantage of the set up for some photos that are all Alannah's own. I decided to see if I could make it work with off-camera flash and a homemade, cardboard snoot rather than setting up the full light set with all its inconvenient reflectors and cords. I called it my MacGuyver lighting in homage to the great 80's crime stopper who could build a bomb to divert the bad guys with just some household clearner, a knife, a roll of duct tape and a Hostess Twinkie. Or something like that. It doesn't sound nearly as cool in our post-911 world but its all in the spirit of do-it-yourself solutions. And my Macguver lighting worked pretty well...

Once we took down the backdrop to get some of my more typical documentary pics, poor Alannah had a bout of gas that just couldn't be relieved. Poor Erin tried everything she could to soothe Alannah and get her to sleep but the more we wanted her to become peaceful the more agitated she became. I know that "screaming" isn't the choice shot to memorialize a child's brief stay in beloved babyhood but there's also some tender parenting to be seen in such pictures.

Here's a slideshow with some of my favorites from Alannah's very first photo session and if you would like to see the full session, click here. I will be documenting Baby Alannah over the next year so there will be more to share as she grows!

posted by Mel @ 9:57 AM