Inside My Camera Bag | Kelly Brown

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Hi everyone, I’m Kelly and I photograph babies. :) In 2004 my life changed with the birth of my first child. Seeing me take lots of photos of baby Georgia, my husband encouraged me to enroll in a photography course and shortly after Little Pieces Photography was born.

I am based in Brisbane, Australia, but these days I am lucky to photograph babies all over the world and present to photographers to share some of the lessons I have learned about photography, post-production and business.

One of the most important things about photographing babies is to understand how to calm and pose them. Beautiful props, sweet outfits and fancy camera equipment are lovely to have, but it is important to be able to settle an uncomfortable bub or know how to pose a baby who likes to wriggle and squirm.

Since the start of my business I have worked from a home studio, but recently I started shooting from a commercial space, which has been purposely fitted out to photograph babies. My studio has a wall of windows, so I don’t use a lot of artificial light in my photography, but when needed I use a Westcott Flex daylight mat, which is a wonderful and portable LED light, handy for taking with me when I travel to deliver workshops.

I am currently using the Canon 1DX MKII as my primary camera body, and occasionally use a Canon 5Ds. My favourite lens is the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II because of its versatility. It allows me to zoom out when photographing babies in props from above without having to stand on anything. I’m also really enjoying the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L and the Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L for my concept portrait work.

One thing I wish I could pack in my bag to take everywhere with me is my new Canon Pro-1000 printer.

A few other crucial bits of equipment:
15” Macbook Pro – a necessity to take with me wherever I go, particularly handy to do work from the plane
Kelly Moore Jack bag – safely houses all my photography gear and Macbook
Canon G5X – handy little camera that packs a punch
iPhone 6 Plus – I get a lot of phone calls, so this doesn’t leave my side. Plus, it doubles as a white noise machine to keep babies slumbering.
External hard drives – essential to back up my work when I’m on the move
Card reader – to download images on the run
CF cards – essential for every kit. I use the largest capacity card I can to avoid needing to change cards.
Wacom Intuos Pro medium – keeps my retouching accurate and speedy
Eizo ColorEdge CG246 – essential to accurately balance the colour of my images
Passport