When it came the time for our son
to turn 1, I wanted to mark the occasion with a smash cake shoot. Photography
in general is quite expensive in New Zealand, and we had already paid $500NZD
for a pregnancy and new born shoot, so didn’t want to venture down that path
again when he turned 1. I spent some time on YouTube and Pinterest looking
for DIY ways of doing a smash cake shoot at home.
I found quite a lot of inspiration
and decided that I would give it a try myself.
The first thing I got was a large
white sheet – and laid it out half on the floor and half up the wall. Luckily
we have a large extra lounge downstairs that is tiled, and was the perfect
blank canvas. I just taped it to the wall in a kind of L shape. I left it there
for about a week – so that any creases would disappear. For backdrop decoration
I bought some thick blue streamers, taped these up on a piece
of string so that they hung down so they touched where the sheet met the floor.
Next I blew up some little balloons and placed them around the “set”.
The reason I chose to use a white sheet, was so that there were no skirting
lines, and you could not tell the floor from the walls. An all white backdrop
also make the cake and Keaton stand out.
The camera I used was a Nikon D5000 – I used a tripod so that all the pictures would have the exact same backdrop, and would be easier to follow the whole cake smash process.
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| (Unedited Picture) |
The camera I used was a Nikon D5000 – I used a tripod so that all the pictures would have the exact same backdrop, and would be easier to follow the whole cake smash process.
The cake I made was a bit of a
fail – the icing was a bit too runny – so where I wanted these nice swirls in
the icing, I got a runny blob – but he seemed to enjoy it anyway.
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| (Unedited Picture) |
Keaton just wore jeans,
suspenders and a black bow tie – I did not want his clothes to stand out too
much – so the simpler the better.
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| (Unedited Picture) |
He was a bit apprehensive of the
cake at first, and was not sure what to do. Eventually he got the hang of it
and started to have fun. I will never forget this day – as it was the day he
got up and started walking properly for the first time.
I did all the editing of the pictures myself using Adobe
Photoshop – I am a real novice at Photoshop, so again watched tutorials on how
to get creases out of fabric etc, and managed to remove most of them so the
backdrop looked “professional”.
