strong as a mother: a different kind of maternity photoshoot
Most maternity sessions look alike - a feminine air of the expecting goddess smiling and looking down at her belly. The only thing that differentiates these photoshoots is the color of the dress and the length of the train.
Oh, and almost everyone wears a floral crown.
It is so trite that it brings on the severe nausea of the first trimester.
Listen, I have created photos like this before in these maternity photoshoots. And if it’s your thing, go for it. I can create these photos for you, but chances after reading this you won’t… Oh well…
My invitation is to understand WHY you are having these photos done THIS way? By all means have your maternity photos taken but avoid the cookie cutter pictures plastered all over Instagram and Pinterest.
Work with a photographer who sees the uniqueness of you and is creatively bold to push outside the commonplace.
When is the best time to do a maternity photoshoot?
It is considered best to photograph maternity around 30-32 weeks. At this point, the belly is very visible but the mother is still quite mobile and not exhausted from carrying around a busload of a belly. In addition to that, the expecting mom does not look bloated or puffy. At this stage she is not yet screaming “come out already!” and maybe that is why the tendency is to create light and airy dreamy photos.
Amy, the woman in these photos, did not do her maternity photoshoot at 32 weeks.
Or 34 weeks.
Or 38 weeks.
She waited, and waited and pontificated whether she needs to do it in the first place.
You see, she had her Mother Blessing Ceremony, which was absolutely beautiful and during which we captured some photos of her henna painted belly. Maybe that’s why she did not have the need to document this phase in a maternity photoshoot - she kinda sorta already did.
“I feel like I want to get all dolled up for the photos but at the same time I don’t want to.” Amy confessed.
Amy was 40 weeks pregnant. Her belly was humongous and she was tired. When I think back to the last weeks of my pregnancies, the last thing on my mind was pretending to be a light airy fairy floating through the woods with her magical belly. When you are THAT pregnant, it’s not easy.
Maternity photoshoot in the comfort of your home
Since Amy was not getting back to me, I sent her a message saying this:
“Listen, I’m coming over to your house and we are doing a maternity photoshoot. You can be in sweats, I don’t care. We just need to document this in photos. And once we have your photos taken, your daughter might say, “ok, I can come out now because Mommie got her big belly photos taken.”
Amy wrote back, “OK”. We agreed to photograph on the morning of December 31.
As I was driving to this girl’s maternity session, a different kind of vision came to me. Instead of soft and feminine, I saw a fearless, powerful, badass, tough goddess ready for labor. “We will need your husband’s jacket and black boots”, I said, after I kissed her hello.
I also picked up some flowers at Trader’s Joe on the way over to her house. Baby breath, and some St. John’s Wart flowers that looked like they were made of plastic. For some reason they drew my attention and I followed my intuition.
“I have combat boots” she said.
I got goose bumps. “I love it!” My vision for a hardcore badass goddess ready to fight was coming together. To empathize the edginess, I knew I would be photographing in harsh light, none of that soft light airy nonsense. The sun was right above us at this point, in zenith, high South Florida noon. I wouldn’t want her to be squinting, I knew I would have her wearing my cool Goodr sunglasses.
I wanted to portray softness AND edginess and power at the same time, so I inserted baby breath into her boots. Totally not an original idea, I saw it done somewhere before in a high fashion photoshoot. Unoriginality of my vision did not bother me for a second, it had to be done THAT WAY.
As Amy waddled through the house collecting some other pieces she needed, the flowers fell out of course.
We headed outside, I asked Amy to sit on a stool in front of a shed in their backyard.
By the way, I knew Amy would be giving birth at home, and guess who her birth photographer would be? ME!!! And maybe that’s why the vision for her photos came the way it did. Sitting in front of a shed, symbolizing tools of LABOR, something that she would be doing in the nearest future.
This is how the photos turned out.
We also did a soft and vulnerable session indoors with her husband and their dog Yogi and cat Belle.
Do you want to hear the most insane part about this photoshoot?
We did our maternity session on December 31, 2023.
On January 1, 2024, Amy went into labor!
As Amy’s birth photographer, I got to witness all the badass and hard core goddess energy that transpired in the 15 hours that I was in their home. It was absolutely incredible to witness that, document it in a beautiful film and photographs AND heal some of my own stuff related to birth.
