Full-Length Nude Back Pose | Transcription
Okay, so Ellie has been fed and burped, and now we need to get her back comfortably sleeping. Now, I spent quite a bit of time calming and shushing her back to sleep, and I would say, at this point, try not to rush back to shooting. You want to spend a bit of time getting your newborn into a deep sleep so posing him or her doesn’t bother or awake them. What generally works well for me is to hold the newborn’s arms where you want them for a good, say, a minute or so. Then let go and at that point they’ve relaxed and kind of held that pose so long that they’re generally going to stay pretty well in position. The same thing holds true when it comes to the legs. You hold the newborn’s legs in the position that you want for, say, 30 to 60 seconds, and once the baby is calm and sleeping, generally the legs will stay long enough, at least for a moment, just to capture the shot.
For this specific shot we were having a hard time getting Ellie’s legs to stay in position long enough to get the shot, and this happens quite often, so I’ll often ask a third person, either mom or dad, to step in and help for just a moment to hold the reflector. Now since mom was resting I just opted to hold the reflector myself and let it sort of rest on Olivia’s back as she was holding Ellie’s legs in position. At the silver side of the reflector it’s just adding a nice amount of field directly down and on to Ellie. Once I’m completely ready to snap the photo, I simply have Olivia move her hands out of the shot, and voila. The legs stay long enough that we get our full length nude back pose shot as you guys see here.
This shot looks very simple but it’s rather tricky, and it requires quite a bit of time and patience. What I would highly recommend is that you start your shoot with the basic back pose shots, cover all your bases. Then finish the back poses with this shot. If you get it, great. If not, no worries, because you already got a bunch of other great shots. It can really hurt your shooting confidence if you, say, start with a difficult shot like this. You’re 45 minutes or an hour into the shoot and you still haven’t gotten it yet, so start with those basic back poses that build up your shooting confidence, and then move on to the tougher stuff.
