The floating baby trick is something I never understood how to do.

I figured it out a while ago on my own… and here are a few step by step instructions that I hope help.

Photoshoot PREP Tips

1. Grab a cheap black fleece throw at any store.. I got mine from Walmart for $3.50
2. Once you find a baby get the mom (or dad) to wrap up in this blanket. Make sure she doesn’t have a long sleeve shirt on.  Otherwise the sleeves will show, and she’d get hot.
3. Once she’s pretty well covered you are ready to go. Oh wait… you need the baby!
4. Put the baby in her arms. You can do many positions with this trick. Whatever works.
5. Snap the photographs, and don’t worry about all the space not covered by the black. You don’t have to cover the mom’s face up, as long as the majority of the area surrounding the baby is covered then you are fine.  In fact, I recommend you let her breathe… so lets leave her head UNcovered if you can help it. hehe

Working the Photoshop Magic…

1. Open your photograph in Photoshop. (I use Photoshop Elements 6.0 for Mac.) Brighten it to the extent you want.  I do most of my pre-editing before working with the black background.
2. Now to get rid of all that extra space what you do is two things:
   • Use the EYE DROP TOOL at the edge of the black backdrop to select the same color.
   • Then use the PAINT BRUSH to fill in the rest of the background. It will look sloppy at first… just do that and you will be ready for the next step.
3. Once the background is all colored in select the BURN TOOL.
4. Then use the burn tool like a brush and paint over all of the black. You will see that this tool begins to DARKEN anything it touches. Darken all the black until it looks totally solid. If you need to, ZOOM UP closer to the baby and make the brush smaller to get the fine details darkened.
5. Once all your background is burned, you will want to do the rest of your editing.  In this particular photograph I adjusted the levels of the shadows some to give that black a very dark clean look, and I also added some Contrast and Highlights.  To finish I gave it a fun Split-Tones Action, Sharpened it a hair… and I was done.

The more you do this the easier it gets. It seems like a lot of work, but I seriously edited this photograph in under 5 minutes.

Feel free to comment with any questions

Below is another photograph edited using this method… same baby, different angle.