Mom Photographs Flying Babies

[Brownie]

Some of you may have already seen this but I figured I would share it with the class:

“New York City-based photographer Rachel Hulin got the idea to create shots of her baby Henry flying last summer, when he was six months old. “He was a baby who loved to be lifted up,” she tells Shine. “I was always taking pictures of him and I had an epiphany that it would be interesting to try that without another person.” Hulin recalls the first images looked a little “spooky.” Like many new moms, Hulin was always wondering what was going on in his mysterious baby brain. “It was Henry’s world,” she says. “The pictures were kind of an allegory for that.” Henry is now eighteen months old and it is getting harder to photograph him airborne. “First we investigate and find a good spot that Henry is interested in,” she explains. “My husband will lift him really quickly and see what pose he strikes.” Mom says that about half the time the picture doesn’t work. “But sometimes it’s magical!” While she says the photos are “slightly retouched,” Hulin won’t reveal the exact process. She says she doesn’t want them to lose their quality of mystery.

Hulin is compiling the photographs to illustrate a children’s book. Flying Henry will be available in April 2013.”

 

-Sarah B. Weir, Shine Staff

http://shine.yahoo.com/photos/mom-photographs-flying-baby-slideshow/

 

What do you think of her work? Which images are more powerful or interesting to you?

[stef]

More than just slight retouching. 🙂

 

But it’s cute… obviously she does something like shoots twice, probably from a tripod, and drops the baby (being tossed in the air) into the image. That keeps the light right. She’s good at it, too.

[lolz]

If you look closely at the photos, the shirt on the child, etc., you can see where the baby was being held by someone, and then edited out. It reminds me of a rip off on Jason Lee’s absolutely amazing and hysterical work. This one isn’t bad, but Jason’s a master.

[Brownie]

Haha, just a little bit.

 

I personally thought that it was garbage the first time I looked at it because the first picture is kinda meh for me but I came back to it in order to post a link here, and it hit me that this is interesting work, enhanced, but still interesting photo composition as it should be called.

The “New Human” one has to be my favorite, the banner is strange, the floating child is strange, the bed is odd. I found myself just staring at this picture for a few minutes…

[CIRCA]

I can’t decide whether to be impressed or horrified.

[spike]

I kind of like the one with the umbrella, though it’s a shame the boy’s face isn’t more in view.

I wonder if the person holding/tossing the baby is wearing a chroma key suit. Just for shits and grins I did a “flying kid” photo of one of my neighbors’ kids. Technically it’s mostly a matter of using a tripod and layer masks in PP, but artistically getting that pose to look natural and “flighty” is hard as hell. I finally explained to my model, who was balancing on her stomach across a bar stool, “It’s like planking, but not quite so stiff.”  After some post-production I showed her the images. She was impressed, but then again, she IS only nine years old and hasn’t seen what I can do with HDR and spot-colour.

The little guy in that slideshow will probably get a kick out of those pictures a few years from now, but when he’s a teenager, he’ll probably be willing to pay good money to have all copies of those images rounded up and destroyed.

[Click It And Stick It]

HDR and spot color are gimmicky and 99 times out of 100 disgusting.  I would love to “see what you can do” with them.

[CraigHarris]

Picture 10 is plain scary, looks like the child is falling down the stairs to their death – that’s not nice and I’m not sure why anyone would want to portray such.

Overall, whilst on a purely technical level they are good, I don’t like them; the subject is just too unnatural.

The bed ones (2 & 6) are at least half near the realistic possibility of the child jumping and bouncing about from a bed.

4, 7 & 11 look like rather random copy & pastes of the child into other photos, although the lighting is rather realistic, so maybe they were done as a 2 image composition in situ, which is presumably how most of them were done?

[Brownie]

Of course the subject is unnatural. that’s what makes them interesting. I could care less about a typical realistic child picture.

 

I think 10 is great. I love the form the child has.

[IHF]

I think they are fantastic!!!  It’s fun creative and wonderful

[creyes8519]

Painstaking photoshop work.  I’m too lazy to do that with my kids lol

[fstopper89]

I think it’s very creative and fun. I commented on the one post and I’m sure it’s a composite of at least a few images (background is one, sheet clipped to a clothesline is two, and kid could be a few depending on how the husband was holding him).

It’s not meant to be natural. It’s meant to push the envelope a bit with what you can do with digital software and some cool ideas.

[EvilDaystar]

I’ve done similar shots where I had two different looks … one look infront of the mirror but my reflection eas different.

It’s nothing super difficult to do.

Shoot the scene with no one in it.
Shoot the scene with the dad throwing the baby up in the air.
In photoshop, load both images as layers in one document the empty limage first).
using a layer mask, remove the father from the scene reveling the fatherless image underneath.
Do a little cleanup with the layer mask to remove tell tale shadows and the likes.

TADA!

[Author]

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