Another portrait attempt

My daughters 1st birthday is coming up this weekend. I really wanted to get some shots that showed her personality. I am really hating shooting the color pink.. especially that baby pink where white and pink seem to blend. All of these were shot with natural light, no flash, and indoors with a white cloth backdrop. I know some are a little too washed out with the pink and background.. but these were really a tough edit for me to get them to do what I wanted. She was also very cranky and not willing to do much but move and try to run away lol.

They seem a little overexposed and slightly OOF. I know the pain of dealing with kids. It's amazing that you get any shots off with them in the studio.

I would like to see these with less clarity, and more softness. You could still have the overexposed slightly blown out look, but defining features on a young one is distracting imho. Cute kiddo

These shots look over-exposed, slightly out of focus, with possible movement blur, and too high contrast. It's puzzling. So I looked at the metadata for the first one. Here are my observations:

Digital Rebel - should be better images. Why not?
1/30 sec on a 50mm lens at F/5.0 - explains the possible movement blur. Also too many parts out of focus.
ISO 800 - ding-ding-ding - This is the major problem, I think. 800 ISO is probably pushing if for a Rebel. You've got high noise, but more importantly, shallower dynamic range, which leads to high contrast images with lots of blown out areas.

Next time, wait until she's in a better mood. Buy her a new toy. Sit her near a sunny window or right next to a window with northern exposure (no direct sun). Turn down the ISO. Go for it.

Composition-wise, the first two are not compelling images. The third is the best and might be capable of being rescued in post processing. You did shoot it in raw mode, didn't you?

The last one has the look that says, "How LONG is this going to continue?"

The color balance is off on all of these. #1 and #3 are too red/pink, #2 is very orange, and #4 has a slight green tint?

In general there is too much light and too much contrast.

be careful, babies don't need to have their skin softened, if it's done it will look unnatural .