Gorgeous Baby Nya at 17 days old

As I was sat here trying to work out which part of my marketing I should concentrate on next, I just realised that it is in fact Friday! And Friday is my unofficial blog day! Hurray!!! So here I am… wondering what you might like to see or hear about. I doubt very much that you would like to see more snow pictures… I have a few of those, but to be honest they are not as good as I want them to be! However, I might pop a few on in another post, anyway. Rather than snow, I will tell you about Baby Nya. Well – last week I was very fortunate to have been asked to do a newborn baby shoot. Baby Nya was born on New Year’s Eve, so she is a very special baby! She is also incredibly wriggly, and did not fancy lying still one little bit, or going to sleep, or having her photo taking. However, we persevered and did manage to get some lovely shots. She’s a beautiful little thing… I love doing baby shoots because I get to spend some time with the mum, really getting to know her and the baby. The shoots are usually quite long, as we spend an awful lot of time waiting for the baby to feed, to sleep, to wake up, fall back asleep etc etc. There are many shots you can get in between this, especially of mum and baby together, and it is never a hardship. I love spending 3 or 4 hours simply being around and taking shots as they appear in front of me, or drinking tea and eating biscuits hearing about all the horror stories of the births! It is really such a privilege to be allowed into the home of a new born baby and a new mum. It is a bit like a hurricane that comes in and disturbs the peace and quiet for a while. I often have to remind myself of what it was like for me when I was a new mum. I loved having people come round, but I also so loved the time when M and I could sit on the sofa together, on our own, with no one else around, and she could just lie and fall asleep on my chest. I always know when it is time to leave as well, as babies have an amazing knack of telling me when to go… by the 3rd hour they have usually had enough! I Know that some people think that they don’t really need the photos done or want them done or… well, I don’t know, I just know that I took so many photos of M when she was born, but they were all on my phone, and I wish with all my heart that I had known someone who could have come and taken some really special ones of my baby. A friend of mine told me that although she had not been that fussed about having her daughter photographed, when I came and did them and she saw them a little later, she was so pleased! She now thinks that it is almost essential to have them done at the very earliest of stages because they change so quickly from newborn to big baby, but it is not until you have experienced that, and until you can see it in front of your face, that you know it is a good thing to have done. The best ones are usually within 10 days of the baby being born, the earlier the better though – the main reason for this is that they are still pretty malleable and you can usually make them sleep with their legs tucked in or resting their heads on their own hands, for that funny effect! After about 12 days their legs just start to splay about and they are much more aware and awake. So I shall leave you with a few photos of the lovely, awake, smiley and extremely cheeky baby Nya.

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Welcome to my world

Hey y’all! Welcome to my blog and general ramblings on my adventures in photography. My name is Christina – I am a studio and on-location photographer.

Since I started this blog my photographic journey has gone from strength to strength and during that time I have to admit that, at least in the last 6 months, I have done very little blogging – my ‘very’ bad! But, I intend for that to change!

My passion is photographing women and my project the Essence of Woman is all about finding the beauty in all women and giving it wings! You can read more about it here: http://christinadithmar.smugmug.com/The-Essence-of-Woman and I will soon be writing a blog post on it too.

I do of course still love all kinds of photography and am incredibly grateful to be able to do a job that doesn’t feel like a job at all. Please feel free to leave comments and I promise to try and keep it updated a bit better than previously! You can have a look at my work on my website www.christina-dithmar-photography.co.uk, many of my clients leave their galleries open for browsing, so feel free to take a peak!

I look forward to making your acquaintance!

Christina

It was a week before Christmas… and my first pet photography session

Actually it was 2 weeks before Christmas, but who’s counting…and all was still… no it wasn’t… I was at Maxine’s and all was definitely not still. I was doing my very first ‘pet’ shoot – or ‘dog-shoot’ more specifically. It was a top secret affair as the end product was to be a present for Max’s husband for Christmas. This was the reason I was not able to talk about it until now.

As this was my first pet shoot, I was a little bit nervous. I was told it was a dog, but I had no idea what type of dog, but I had of course said yes and was, despite people saying one should never work with children or animals, very excited to see what I was going to get to shoot. It turns out that it was the cutest, sweetest little miniature schnauzer, whowas rather appropriately named ‘Reggie’. For a first go at photographing a dog I have to say I was very fortunate. Reggie was adorable. He was sweet and gentle and a little bit bouncy and mad at the same time, but the funniest thing about Reggie was (in fact there were 2 funny things) firstly his love of feet (very odd), and secondly his unbelievable ability to actually pose in front of the camera. You might not believe it, but he did… as you will soon see. I presumed that most of the session would be spent running around trying to catch a snap of little Reggie, but no, Reggie was very happy to just stand or sit in front of the camera, with his head held high or his head on paws and his ears flapping down with an occasional attempt to come and lie on my back as I was getting down to his level with no care or thought as to the effect he was having! Reggie was a true charmer. I was absolutely bowled over.

When I left I simply couldn’t wait to get home and see what the shots were like. I was delighted! So pleased! I hardly needed to do any post processing at all. The light, although indoors, had been really kind to me, and I had not struggled in the slightest. Sometimes I do struggle with indoor photography, depending on the light and the shutter speed which I often get wrong indoors, I very often end up with blurry out of focus shots. I am still to work out exactly what I am doing wrong, as it doesn’t seem to happen all the time, but I suspect that it is when I knock the camera settings by mistake… anyway, I didn’t have that problem at all with Reggie. I used my 50mm lens and my 18-200mm zoom (my comfort lens) and kept the aperture wide open. In fact, I treated the whole thing as I would a normal portrait, and that seemed to work. I produced colour, black and white and one set of slightly desaturated images, which I think I prefer out of all them. Reggie was mostly grey, but had the cutest little bits of brown in his beard.

I spent a lovely hour and a bit chatting and getting to know Maxine and taking photos of Reggie. It was so much fun and I can’t wait to be able to do some more pet photos. I really enjoyed myself so much more than I ever thought I would. It was both a challenge and a joy! When I got home and M saw the photos that afternoon she made me promise I would take her round to meet Reggie when I delivered the CD.  A few days later we went back and M got to meet the lovely Reggie too – they played chase and football in the garden, quickly making friends.

So, if anyone has any pets that they would like photographed, do contact me – I would love to do some more pet photography before long, especially some strange and wonderful pets like dragons, snakes and… well, anything really! I am also happy to try cats, though they usually have their own agendas.

My Reggie photos are both on my website http://www.christina-dithmar-photography.co.uk and my smugmug page http://christinadithmar.smugmug.com  Where you can actually buy prints of them, should you wish – here are a few tasters:

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