First Birthday Ideas: Purple & Teal
Hello you guys my name is Daniel Troutman and today we are doing another set deconstruction video here at thesmashcake.com and today we're gonna bounce on over to Pinterest like we always do. This is a great source of inspiration for those of you who are just starting out. If you are pumping a dry creative well, like I always like to say: Pinterest is the place that's going to get those creative juices flowing for you. Now in today's photo we're picking on Blueberry Beignet Photography out of Louisiana.
I love these guys and I love these guys because not only because they're from Louisiana, I'm from Louisiana,I love these guys because if you look at this photo, it doesn't overshadow the baby. There's a lot going on there, but the star is still the baby and I love that. I've been guilty of it and I've seen other photographers who are guilty of putting so much in a set that it just kind of overshadows the little one. And it becomes about the set and about the photographer, when what it should be about is you creating heirlooms for that little one. She should be able to take this picture and show it to her great-grandchildren. You know, this this is a family heirloom. That is what we do we create heirlooms. And so they're doing a wonderful job of that right here.
So if you guys want to show Blueberry Beignet Photography some love definitely pop on over to the website: http://www.blueberrybeignetphotography.com You know, I love their photos, you'll love their photos and just to hit them up with a little note saying "hey, we love what you're doing. Keep it up." Because you know that as a photographer when people do that to us here at our studio, that just that makes my week, so definitely give Blueberry Beignet Photography some love, tell them that we sent you and say "hey" for us.
So today's picture. I love it. It's all about the purple and a little bit of teal in there. I just love it. Now those of you who have you know, read my blogs, watched a couple of these deconstruction videos, you know that I love using a solid color. I absolutely, love basing a set on color instead of a set, say like on a theme like a Harry Potter set. Now Harry Potter is cool. I've done a couple of those sets and I love it. But the thing I love about this is that you can buy all the components here and those components can be used in different sets whereas if you buy say, a marauders map or a magic wand that's got some limited uses. So anytime you can base a photo on color. You're gonna get the maximum amount of use and color isn't really dated.Color does go in and out of style and teal is all the rage and has been for a little bit and it'll be orange next week and marsala some other week.
But for the most part color never really goes out of style. Blue is blue. Everybody loves blue. Everybody loves purple and you know. I'm a product of the 70s and I can tell you, looking at my baby pictures you can tell I'm a product of the 70s. Because those pictures just scream 70s and what we want to do as photographers is create timeless, classic heirlooms for folks or at least that's what I want to do.
So I'm gonna get off my soapbox and let's get into this deconstruction. Of course we're gonna start with the purple paper background. That's what I like to do. So if you go over to thesmashcake.com You will find our Pro Shop and in our Pro Shop is a ton of seamless paper. Savage is one of the brands that we love as well as Superior. We love them both and on our website, you're gonna find a plethora of colors.
Now the joy of ordering it through us is that it is an Amazon link. We we do get an affiliate commission, but we’d use them anyway. The affiliate links keep our lights on. Now I don't know if you've ever purchased one of these things, but I'm six foot five and they're much taller than I am. This is a hundred and seven inches wide. So that is not gonna fit in your Mini Cooper, right? You're gonna have to tie that to the roof and drive all over town with this giant like jousting lance sticking off the roof of your car. It's it's awful thing So when you order it using an Amazon link, of course, it's delivered in two days. And the that is is that the shipping is somebody else's problem. We're on the second floor. Our studio is on the second floor of a very large building and I feel sorry for our UPS guy. But not enough to carry that roll of paper up the stairs myself. So, because, there you go, I'm awful. For this set I think that Blueberry Beignet used either Superior’s thistle seamless paper or possibly Savage’s orchid. It's a little hard to tell and you can shift the colors a little bit in post-processing. But I would say either thistle or orchid and both of those colors are available on TheSmashCake.com.
Our next thing - I love those little teal and purple pom poms that are stuck to the seamless paper backdrop. We talk about these pom poms all the time when we make videos, these pom poms are one of the five foundational items you need to have for a smash cake set. You can see they stuck them to the seamless paper background. That gives your background paper a little texture, something for your eye to kind of chew on as it travels through the photo. And if you were using a backdrop with a vinyl floor, you could also use those little pom poms to hide the seam instead of a strip of molding. The joy of doing that is that the child is not going to hurt themselves on a pom pom - it's a tissue paper pom pom. There's no way they can hurt themselves on it. Whereas when you use strip of molding, sometimes they get rowdy and they grab a hold of it and yank it and they can hurt themselves on it. So I love, love, love, love those little pom poms.
Let's move on to the next component; the purple and teal balloons. How many times have I told you how much I love balloons? I love these things because when it comes to creating a set, you get a huge pop of color for like no money that I think it's like 6,000 of these for like $9.99. Okay, maybe that's 6,000 but you get my drift. They're dead cheap and the joy of this is if you fill it with helium, (read our blog about sourcing helium) you can put that pop of color exactly where you want it, exactly where the composition calls for it. That’s what they did here; they just put these nice beautiful round pops of color along the edges and framed the child with it. This is a wonderful way to frame your subject.
I love love love love helium balloons. And of course I get them on Amazon because they're just they're cheap, you know. And you know that you can get the colors you want. Hobby Lobby is amazing, they have a lot of colors, but sometimes I do hit a wall with the colors that they have available.
All right let’s look at the romper and tutu. This is a lot like the rompers that we have. We have a ton of these in our in our prop closet. Usually I just buy bodysuit. You can see this in the upper section right here. You can get that by itself and then buy a tutu to match, but this one I found and I loved it because it's already attached. It does make it easier for the kid to move around when there's not two separate pieces This is not the exact same outfit that was used but it's pretty darn close.
Now let's look at another component: chunky baby necklaces. Now I want to take a minute to talk about safety. Look at this clasp right here. So the first thing you're gonna notice that's a metal clasp. And I absolutely love that. Why? A lot of times you see beaded baby necklaces that have an elastic string in the middle. We had a child come in one time, grabbed that beaded necklace, pulled it out and then let go of it and she popped herself right in the face with these chunky beads. Fortunately, she was fine. And that was very early out of my career. We prefer the safer non-elastic string if we can get it, because it could have been a very serious problem. She could have really hurt herself.
A chunky necklace breaks up the child’s skin and adds a pop of color to the baby. So chunky necklaces are a great way to do that and you can find a ton of them on amazon.com.
The next thing on the list Is a very basic classic cake stand. Every photography studio needs a basic cake stand. You actually need two basic ones for twins. Every now and again somebody brings you twins and you've got to have matching cake stands and a white one will match most everything.
Our next component of our set is a glitter #1 birthday cake candle. This candle is six dollars and ninety cents and that is a lot of money for a wax #1. It's probably too much money. But if I have to run to six stores on a day that I should be at the office marketing my business or on a day that I should be behind the camera, I shouldn’t be spending that day sourcing one prop. Then I'm losing money. I may not the best business person, but I know it's worth more than six dollars and ninety cents for my time.
And Amazon Prime will deliver it in 2 days along with the rest of my order.
Peacock feathers. We did not talk about the peacock feathers. I love these things - you know when I first started buying them I'm like “I'm only gonna use these for one particular set” and then I realized that if the set has green in it I can use them, if it has brown I can use them, if it has teal I can use them, purple, etc… You can pull all of these colors out and peacock feathers were way more versatile that I ever thought they would be.
So yeah, I mean, here's a 12 pack of decorative peacock feathers on Amazon for twenty one sixty plus eight dollars shipping, right? They also have them at Hobby Lobby if you only want a few (never, ever enter Hobby Lobby without a coupon)
So, there it is. Thank you - Blueberry Beignet Photography & Jeneanne Ericsson Photography for posting these lovely pictures on Pinterest. I really appreciate you putting your work out there and the quality of the portraits that you are producing. You are an inspiration to our industry. We all get uninspired and unenthused some days and Pinterest perks us back up.
Have a great day
- Daniel
Thistle Seamless Paper https://amzn.to/2yC2PyQ
Purple and Teal Pom Poms https://amzn.to/2LK7gAx
Purple and Teal Balloons https://amzn.to/2SHnISN
Purple Romper with Purple and Teal Skirt https://amzn.to/2K0KPI9
Chunky Necklace https://amzn.to/2LL86wG
Classic Cake Stand https://amzn.to/2SIO8Dw
Glitter Candle https://amzn.to/2LJULVE
Peacock Feathers https://amzn.to/2LLlO2P (available at Hobby Lobby too: https://tinyurl.com/y5c493ae)
Video Timeline
0:28 Pinterest Inspiration
0:43 Blueberry Beignet Photography
3:28 Thistle Seamless Paper
5:25 Purple and Teal Pom Poms
6:50 Purple and Teal Balloons
8:02 Purple Romper with Purple and Teal Skirt
8:44 Chunky Necklace
9:58 Classic Cake Stand
10:25 Glitter Candle
13:10 Peacock Feathers