Photoshop vs. Two Shifty Toddlers

Of all the different types of people that I’ve photographed over the years, babies and toddlers can present the most challenges. Not only do they have a mind of their own but hey can be very energetic and uncooperative at any given moment. Toddlers can be even more challenging when you have a very distinct idea of what you would like the picture to look like. Add two toddlers into the mix, and you are really in for a challenging photo shoot.

My twin boys and I recently celebrated their 3rd birthday and I decided to gift them an image they would cherish for a lifetime. My only dilemma was I knew it would be impossible to capture all the elements of the image I had in my mind, with one single frame. So I decided to break the whole concept down into baby steps (no pun intended) and tie it all together in photoshop.

First and foremost, I had to get some images of them smiling and having fun. It just so happened that one of the twins was in a great mood and gave me plenty of great expressions. The other twin however, was a bit on the cranky side that day and he really made me work for it. When one twin was smiling and looking at the camera, the other twin was looking off and not cooperating. I did finally manage to get a few good shots of each.


The next part of the image I wanted to incorporate was the birthday cake lit with candles. I decided to photograph the cake before the boys got their hands and mouths all over it. The other challenge was the exposure I needed to get for the cake and the exposure I needed to get the flame on candles, were two very different exposures. So I decided to take two shots. One that exposed the cake properly and another that exposed the flame well enough to be seen.


Another challenge I faced while photographing the twins, was that they did not want to have anything to do with the party hats. As soon as I put their party hats on, they were ripping them off. I decided to photograph the party hats on a doll head as they were better able to hold still and not talk back to me.

With the boys real eager to open presents, I decided to photograph the presents separately as I wanted to have the control later to move them around and fit them into the image as I see fit.


It was important to me to have confetti falling down in the image and knew it would be extremely difficult to time the falling of the confetti with fun expressions I could use in the final image. Again, I decided to take a few images of confetti falling just by itself.

Last but not least, I found an image of a sparkler on the web that worked perfectly in the final picture.
Once I established the cake, table, and confetti falling in photoshop, I was able to make multiple images of the boys giving different expressions.
I think the most challenging photoshop aspect of working on composites like this is the blending part. It’s one thing to cut multiple images out and past them together, but it’s another thing to blend it and make it look real. That’s probably where I spent most my time in the post work.
With an incredible amount of time invested into this project, I was very happy with the final image as it looked even better than how I had originally imagined.

Happy Birthday Boys! I’m your biggest fan!!!