Today I’m excited to share Hazel’s second photoshoot with me as her and her husband Zee get ready to welcome their new baby into the world! I’d love to link to her previous session in this post, but much to my disappointment, her boudoir photoshoot is GZ4 classified. You’ll just have to trust me when I say that she has more than a few images I’d love to show off in my portfolio if I could!
The good news is that she said she’d be okay sharing her maternity photos from her session here which I’m super stoked about! A few of them look pretty different compared to what I typically see posted and I really like that!
I have a much stronger connection to maternity photos now that my wife and I have a little creature of our own. Everything happens faster than I could ever have imagined before having gone though the experience myself and I’m very thankful I had the mindset to document my own families development as it happened. It’s amazing to me how 3 months will go by and I’ll look back thankful as hell that I broke out my camera and preserved some time.
So when Hazel asked me to capture her maternity photos, I feel that little extra bit of pressure these days (in a good way) to do the best thing I can for them. The way I always try to think about it is if I do my job right, hopefully some (all?) of these images will be priceless family heirlooms for their family decades from now. That’s my goal anyway. I sincerely hope I get there more often than not when we all look back.
Where to Buy Maternity Dresses for Photo Shoot
One of the most common questions I get when setting up a maternity session for a mom to be is where she should go to find some maternity dresses for her photo shoot. These days I notice most women are getting the vast majority of their maternity dresses on Amazon.
You can’t really beat the variety and price for what they offer. Also since the trend these days is flowy dresses or stretchy tight dresses, you’ll have a fair amount of tolerance with regards to how it fits. This is always a nice thing when ordering clothes online. Additionally at the price point many vendors offer these dresses, it’s arguably the best solution for something you will probably only wear the one time.
I found a nice secluded little spot I thought Hazel would be comfortable dressing down a bit for some shots with my favorite dress she brought. It was this sheer blue dress she paired with a like color flower crown and a simple pair of lace bottoms.
I never usually tell my clients this, but when I’m looking through their outfits they bring, I usually save my favorite piece for the second or third outfit change. I do this because around this time is usually when I get some of the best shots from their session. It’s pretty rare I don’t have someone warmed up and eager to create more images by this point in the session.
By outfit four or five, I’ve typically exhausted most people so getting my favorite outfit photographed about midway though is almost always a good decision. About the third outfit is usually the sweet spot where I’ve warmed them up, and gained enough trust so that I can really let myself riff posing ideas like a rock god playing a guitar solo.
This final photo was created totally on the fly and I finessed the photo specifically for her. Hazel was apprehensive about showing her tummy, but I thought she needed to show it off and with this blue dress I really felt it called for it. I don’t usually see maternity photos posted like this but I thought this would be a great way to conservatively show off her pregnancy in an elegant (hopefully) timeless way.
Let me know what you think about this session in the comments below! I’m honestly feeling a little disconnected from all of you since I’ve backed off on my participation in social media. It’s bitter sweet for me as I am loving engaging more with a lot of you using alternative communication, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it’s definitely a more isolating experience.
Hope all of you are doing well 🙂
