Here's a little background for how I created this image and then prepared it for the Professional Photographer Magazine cover contest. Amazingly, I came in second place out of over 5000 entries! Here's a link to the PDF of the article.
The past two years when the cover contest winners were revealed I read every single word in both those articles to learn what they were looking for. So when the contest came around this year I chose an image that met those requirements. The image needed to be perfectly in focus, and it needed to be vertical. Also, and very important, there needed to be room at the top of the image to put the magazine's masthead! When I looked through this year's entries, I couldn't believe how many gorgeous images there were that were horizontal! And there were some excellent vertical images that would have been ruined if the masthead had been placed over them. So my guess is that just by meeting those three basic requirements my image was way ahead of the game.
Below is an image of how I set up and lit this shot. Clearly I must have taken this shot at a different time since there are some other props in the scene, but otherwise everything is the same. Click on the image to see a larger size if you're having a hard time reading the red writing. The background is Tranquility from Orange Peel Backgrounds. I did some Photoshop work to remove the seam that splits this paper background into two sections. The floor is some cheap paneling from the home improvement store -- can't remember now if it was from Home Depot or Lowes. I got the molding from a store that sells used building materials and painted it white. I've been using those same pillows in lots of my images over the years. They have served me well!
This incredibly cute little boy was having a really tough day, and we later found out that he was sick. But his mom was super-awesome to work with, so we managed to pull through.
Nikon D2X, 28-70 lens; f/9.5, 1/125th, ISO 100, Larson 4x6 softbox, Larson 42x72 soft white reflector, Photogenic Powerlight 1250DR
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