This weekend I was asked to make a photograph of a baby and his mom for an advertisment in a magazine. The advertisement will be about artificial fertilization. So the idea was to capture the connection between the mom and the baby, and express the excitement(?) of being a mom, but still concentrate on the baby. My friend asked Hilley (the mom) - I hope, I have not misspelled the name - to participate in the shoot with her little Parker.
And here is how I've done the photographs...

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My perception of the baby photograph (of those fragile cute little creatures) is as of something light and soft. And happy. Something similar how we see the Heaven and angels. According this guidelines I see two things to adhere - high key and softfocus. I will talk about it a bit later, now the main thing - lighting.

Lighting
Light is what the photographer paints the photograph with. This is our main tool. And in this shoot I wanted soft light (to follow the guidelines). The soft light means that the shadows produces by such light don't have sharp edges. And better if the light envelopes the baby and the mom - reflectors? Yes, but kind of built-in reflectors. The white walls played a good role as such reflectors - the room was small (we were in a basement) and almost completely white. So the light indeed enveloped us all.
There two lights - background, which I directed on the background and slightly down; and the second is the main light - reflected from the umbrella. The umbrella creates a large light source, which softens the shadows. So, the combination of the umbrella and white walls placed our subjects into a pool of light, which is a good thing for this type of photography.

High Key
This is achieved is quite simply - a lot of light and clothing of light tones. The baby was dressed in almost white shirt, or whaterver they wear. Parker was only two months old, and I have no idea what they wear this age - my memories of this age are completely gone. The mom was dressed in pink t-shirt. Pink in this case added that gentle feeling that women love that much. The other thing, which benefited to the photograph, is the color of Hilley's hair - blonde (dyed).
And to finish the high key setting the background should be white or close to it. In my case it was easy - the white wall.

Soft Focus
What does soft focus mean? Not sharp, a lot of blurred (soft) lines - gradual transition of colors and tones. I don't have soft focus filter. But in this digital era, we can easily add it in the post-processing (i.e. Photoshop).
My steps were as follows:

• Correct the exposure - sometimes it's a bit darker than I wanted (used Levels)
• Remove blemishes - Healing brush tool
• Lighten the white in the eyes - Dodge tool
• Soften the skin with blur (via a duplicate layer with opacity about 30-40%)
• Add overal softness - duplicate later with Gaussian blur (10-20%), the eyes are untouched with layer mask
• Soften and lighten the border - another duplicate layer blurred with Gaussian Blur (60-80%)

As you see a lot of softening was applied, but it should be done gently - be your own judge.