MATERNITY PHOTO SHOOT
I have done maternity photos only once before and today I got a chance to do it again. Yup, you guessed it, my only other time was when my wife and I were expecting my son, and the second time is now, when my wife and I are expecting our second child, our daughter. Actually to be more specific, we are expecting her in thirteen days, just thirteen days! Still sounds crazy to say (or I guess type)! Exciting times, and with so little time left in the countdown and with today being the first dry day in almost a week we decided it was time to go out and take some photos.
In this photo you can see my son posing with my wife (only shot I was able to get of him standing still, that’s three year old life). He talks about his sister all the time and says that he is excited to meet her but I don’t think he fully understands that his days of being an only child are coming to an end real quick!
The key, or so I think, to this type of photography is to give your subject a beautiful background, but, one that isn’t overly detailed and one that can be blurred without losing its beauty. In this case some foliage and a wooden post fence do a great job of providing that background beauty but neither have anything super interesting to them that take your focus away from the subject. I will say that I am extremely happy with how these turned out considering the fact that it was less than half a hour before sunset, we had our three year old with us and the trail that we were on was rather busy causing stops in shooting.
I think this photoshoot and its challenges helped me realize that I am improving in both my shooting skills and in my post editing skills. I felt confident after the shoot that we were not going to have to do a reshoot, that I had gotten exactly what I needed to get to fill my wife’s or in this case, also my client’s needs and wishes. That is the difference that I find challenging in portrait and different “for hire” types of photography, pleasing the customer and meeting their needs. As a person that has primarily shot for an automotive magazine (mind you, one that I owned and had the final say on) and that mostly shoots landscapes that is something that I am not super used to as typically my client’s need and wishes were always my own since I was technically my own client. However, like I said before I want to continue to expand my photography skills and that includes all sorts of different photography styles, so I am open to the challenge (except weddings that is, I did that once, and never again…it’s a long story).
The other trick to this type of photography is to make your subject or model comfortable. My wife may look like a model, but she isn’t one (I know, I know, cornball husband). The point is, she, like most of us isn’t professionally trained to pose in front of a camera and like most of us isn’t fully comfortable in front of one. The key here is to have a conversation (regardless of if you know the subject/model or not) and to get them to stop thinking about posing, then as you are having said conversation, slowly interject instructions like, look away, look towards me, turn this way and so on. Doing this will help them relax and not over focus or over think about looking amazing for the camera. The results? Well, much better photos! Overall I am super happy with how the photos turned out and I had a good time in the process, also my wife is happy with them, and that is the part that really counts. Till next time…
