This is my brother, his fun super cute girl friend and her cutie pie little daughter.  We went for a pic-nic up Provo canyon last month and had to take advantage of the gorgeous changing leaves, so we took some pictures! Gorgeous up there!!!

Okay this one took a lot of work! They practically MADE me climb up a tree and almost die to get this! he he…so glad I did!

I didn’t get any questions last week, but I did this week, so HI THERE…here I am today! (OH my gosh you guys! I saved this to publish and never came back to do it! SORRY!!)

1. How do position your newborns to get great shots? Well first of all, you need TIME!! to be able to do newborn shots. I spend at least 3-4 hours at my clients homes when I do a newborn shoot. All newborns are different, but if you get to photograph them, try and do it with in the first 7-10 days of life. The SOONER the better. I always bring a handful of warm blankets, a heating pad and then make sure there is white noise going on. Tell moms before hand to turn up the heat (you might sweat, but when the baby is in his/her birthday suit, it’s much better to have it WARM!). Make sure mom feeds and changes baby before you come. Lot of little steps to set up for a good newborn shoot. As far a positioning the newborns, I still have a lot to learn! Most of the newborns I’ve shot have been not liked me trying to position them, so I’ll just let them do what they want. If you can spend the time to get the baby out like a log, it works a lot better. Okay, so I’m not sure that even answered your question! LOL.

2. How many shots do you generally take when you do a shoot? Um, it depends. I used to over shoot. I just shot, shot, shot, shot until I was for SURE there MUST be something good on there. The funny thing is, that just takes more time to weed through and then you’re tossing so many! Now, with a normal family or child session (not extended family, because there’s more to shoot), I’ll take some where around 60 shots. Another thing is, now I’ll really try and wait for a shot rather than just shoot and hope it turns out. Id rather have to toss an image because of closed eyes or “user mistakes” than tossing just because I took to many!

3. Do you have a studio set-up? & if so, what equipment do you suggest using? Nope, I don’t have a studio set up. I am fully natural light, so when I go into someone’s home, I use my surrounding or if it’s a newborn session (which it is 90% of the time when I go into a home), I will find the biggest window and use my blankets to drape over a couch or pillow or whatever my client has there to work with. One day I would like to have some lights and studio stuff I could bring on location for darker days, but for now, just natural light

Alright! Caught up! Keep them coming and remember you can find all the Q&A’s up top!

This is my spunky baby girl! Today at school was “crazy hair day” and she was all over getting the chance to be silly and have her hair fun (unlike my son who gets embarrassed and didn’t want his hair silly). These pictures are just SO HER! She is full of life, spunky, silly, crazy, beautiful, and fun! The older she gets and the more she grows into her personality, I just love this little thing! Look at her…how could you NOT?!!

This is my good friend Karilynn and her family! Karilynn has just recently lost over 70 lbs and is looking FAB!!! She wanted to make sure to get family pictures so she could show off her new bod (and of course her cute family!). So proud of you Karilynn!! Thanks for the fun time!

Thank you guys for asking questions! Don’t forget I’ve added them all (up top) for you if you need to go back and see them all!

1. Do you shoot in RAW and what are the advantages or disadvantages? (may get shunned here) No, I do not use RAW. I keep “meaning” to try it, but haven’t. I even have lightroom and I HEAR that RAW is awesome especially for saving pictures from under or over exposure (which happens to the best of us!). I guess I just don’t like change, so I’ve stuck to JPG.

2. what photo editing software do you use – or suggest? I used PS7 for YEARS and just upgraded to CS4. I think PS7 or anything above that is just great.

3.  I have seen a lot of pictures where some of the colors are very bright and almost florescent looking. For example, an old green tractor that is a dull color looks very vibrant and bright in the picture. How do you do this?? One way that I know of is using the “saturation” tool. In the tool palette, you have the “dodge, burn and sponge tool” the sponge tool can be used to saturate or desaturate. You could duplicate the layer and pull the color out by using the burn tool and erasing back in what you don’t want vibrant. I think there are so many ways of getting that effect, my ways might be silly, but for the most part, I would use the saturation on a low opacity.

So I had my first set of mini sessions yesterday! Last Sunday we had family over (18 kids and 11 adults all shoved into our little home) for dinner. The next day my sister in law text everyone that her son was sick with the swine flu and we’d all been exposed. Sure enough, come Tuesday my daughter got sick…followed by my son and then ME Friday and Saturday. We don’t have the swine flu, but just a nasty stomach bug. I had scheduled 4 sessions between yesterday and today and was determined (sick or not) to make it! Can I just say that I’m SO GLAD I DID!?!! Two of the mini’s from tonight were long time friends who we haven’t seen or been around in years! My mom and their moms (sisters…so the mommies in the pictures) are good good friends and we spent so much time as kids together! So it was SO good to see them again and get to interact with their (gorgeous) families!

My first mini was with the older of the two sisters. I laughed when she said “have you met my husband”? because I remember when they were DATING over 19 yrs ago!!! They were “Brent and Mikelle” for heaven sakes! I was 10 and they seemed so in love..so cute and guess what?! They still are so in love and so cute…and then add their GORGEOUS kids into the mix……..Can’t get any better than that!!

My next mini session was so so fun! Mom had told me that her daughter is really serious and was worried a mini session might not be enough time, but I tell you what…this cutie pie was just as sweet as could be! Very curious about what was going on and just a sweetie! Mom and dad were great too, so down to earth and truly nice people!

My last mini was with the other beautiful sister, who is closer to my age, so we spent more time together as kids. My FAVE memory of Kerry is in Park City when we “tricked” my litter sister into thinking there as a giving tree! We would hide in the branches (and mind you, this was NOT a tree FULL of leaves…it was a skimpy little tree and I’m not sure WHY we thought we couldn’t be seen!) and throw candy down to my sister thinking we were SO cleaver!!! I love memories like that! I’m glad you guys decided to come last minute, because I loved seeing your cute little family!

Fashion Friday is back! I missed a week, I’m feeling a little out of it lately and I have so much catching up to do! So now that fall is here and it’s getting COLD outside, you can do SO many fun and cute things for your sessions! LAYERS LAYERS LAYERS!!!! Stack on those layers! and add lots of TEXTURE! My finds this week come from the cutest little store called BODEN! They have a mini boden part of their store and the clothes are SO SO CUTE! Who says winter has to be boring!? Add bright colors and guess what?! They don’t all have to MATCH! that’s the FUN of choosing your outfits…pick three colors you LOVE and throw them all together! Have fun with it!

So like all other Fashion Fridays! If you book your a session THIS WEEK (Friday October 9th – Friday October 16th) and show up wearing ANYTHING from Boden you will get something awesome! This week is a BIG ONE! If you book a session this week, you will be a pack of holiday cards for FREE! (25 cards and envelopes. A $40 value!). I have a lot of new holiday cards to choose from, and you can see them HERE. Contact me to book a session or with any questions! m@melissadavisphotography.com

Wow guys, I have been slacking! We switched computers and it was quite the pain to get everything back in order! So here I am again with Q & A’s!! I have also added my Q & A’s up top so you can quickly get to them and re-read or READ them!

I’m wondering if you could go over how to sharpen the eyes? I don’t sharpen the eyes other than my normal sharpening I do for print. I also have answered this in a Q & A. I use the USM:  “filter – sharpen – unsharp mask. I play with the settings, but for a general rule, I start at Amount: 150 – 200%, Radius: 0.2 – 0.9 px, Threshold: 0 levels. I duplicate the layer to I can erase the bg and other objects back in after I sharpen”. I usually erase the back ground and MOST body parts back in besides the face.

How about color popping? You can find my color popping techniques here: http://melissadavisphotography.com/photoblog/?p=647 and here: http://melissadavisphotography.com/photoblog/?p=686 I always when I use saturation, be sure to duplicate the layer so I can erase back the skin so it doesn’t look over done.

When editing how do you keep skin tones consistent? Ha ha ha! I don’t! I know lots of photographers will say when critiquing “the skin tones aren’t consistent” but lighting changes and different cast are shed from trees, grass, buildings etc. I do try and keep the skin tones consistent with what the situation was, if that makes sense? I guess that doesn’t have to do with editing lol. When EDITING, the best way to stay consistent is to edit consistent. That’s the best thing I could tell ya. I edit each picture pretty much the same way.