Some different newborn shots

Did a shoot for a client and she wanted something a little different for her newborn shoot. The baby would not sleep so the sleeping baby shots were out the window. She showed me some pics others had done so we took our best shot at doing something similar. Feel free to comment and critique on what I have done here and thanks for looking!
Since I haven't linked from Flikr in a while I guess I will have to figure out how to embed photos again....

I like the idea. I wish the backgrounds were solid black though. I can't tell what is in the blacks, looks maybe like noise.

I really like the idea of these! Agree with lots of noise in the blacks- it's almost like a scanner. I#2 is my favorite. I would like #1 more if the wording was moved off of the feet to each side (or above/below). When you look back as parents at pics like these, my eye always goes to the detail of the wrinkles and finger/footprint lines of each of my children and you begin to remember that moment in time- with the word overlay, it is distracting to me. The baby's right foot in the B/W is out of focus. I like Mom & Dad's photos a lot, but the DOF is off for Mom's lower hand and the baby's left of foot - I think it would be a nice collage to put their pics and one of the baby's with the rings in the center perhaps. The pic with the dog looking at the new shoes is great!

Thanks for the comments guys! I did the feet with the writing on them both ways, with and without the wording so they could decide if they liked it or not. I am having trouble seeing the noise you are referring to though? I have printed all of these in 8X10 format and the backgrounds appear solid black on all the prints as they appear on my monitor. hmmmmmm...maybe it is time for me to get some glasses? The shallow d. o. f. was due to me using a ring light as the only light source. The parents were a bit concerned with the affects of my studio strobes flashing on the wide awake baby's retinas. Not being an expert on these types of things I erred on the safe side. The only setting I could get a good exposure with was just about wide open and iso 800, therefore the shallow focal plane. I did several of each shot with the focus spot on different parts of the images so we could see which looked the best. I posted the ones I liked the best but they may like other ones better. Thanks again for the feedback!

Hi, I wonder if you can make the words more transparent?

Diane

cameragal1 wrote in post #17032313
Hi, I wonder if you can make the words more transparent?

Diane

might be a good idea to try! Thanks for the idea..

I'm seeing the color is off a little bit. Looks like it needs to be cooled a hair. Really can tell in the last one as the white backdrop they are standing on is pretty yellow.

Vmann wrote in post #17048664
I'm seeing the color is off a little bit. Looks like it needs to be cooled a hair. Really can tell in the last one as the white backdrop they are standing on is pretty yellow.

It was tough to get the skin tones right because the husband had very olive (almost yellowish) skin tones and the wives tones weren't totally normal either. I just used the K value of the ring light as my baseline of the white balance. Using the white balance slider in lightroom to improve the tones seemed futile as any adjustment looked worse than the as shot version. Where the babies skin was part of the pic everything looked good in regards to the infants tones...thanks for the input!