It’s very difficult to take photographs of Cameron as he will not sit still, he grabs the lights, punches the umbrellas and just generally is a monster. The bonus is that all his jumping around and pulling faces are quite entertaining and certainly expressive.
Have you ever tried to photograph a two year old? Painful is an understatement. The problem is when that two year old is your only model you have no choice but to try your best, keep on your toes and curse under your breath!
Post processing is very simple:
1)Duplicate layer
2)Gaussian blur 9 pixels
3)Set layer to soft light
4)Desaturate the duplicate layer (to zero)
5)Mask the eyes, hair, eyebrows from the original shot back in.
6)Dodge the highlights on the face, midtones 9%
7)Burn the shadow areas on the face, 9% midtones
8)Flatten the image
9)Dodge across eye area, including eyelids, 4% midtones.
10)Levels adjustment.
11)Smart Sharpen 18%, 1 pixel. Run it twice.
Lighting Info: Canon 580EX II at 1/8th power, zoom at 35mm, on stand, camera left, through shoot-thru umbrella. Canon 580EX at 1/16th power, zoom at 24mm, on stand, camera right through shoot-thru umbrella. Big window as backlight. Strobes triggered by PW Plus II. You can see the setup here.