We’ve known this beautiful woman for many years. Felipe photographed her for the first time back in 2012, and then again for a styled shoot in the woodworking studio where she spent most of her time back in 2015. We’ve become good friends over the years, which is why I was so excited when I learned that this time around, I would get to work with her for a very special occasion: her first pregnancy.
For this session, we discussed a number of option for where and how to shoot; in a pristinely manicured local attraction, in her home, in the city, and so on. In the end though, we decided to go with sentimentality over pure aesthetic, choosing an ‘unofficial’ park in her neighborhood that was, at one time, her childhood stomping grounds. This seemed like a fitting choice, given the nature of the images. In all likelihood, she’ll walk these paths with her baby as well, and these images will forever tie into that.
A few days before the session, we had some snowfall which was clearly going to stick around for a while. Combined with the fact that the park was little more than a wooded path through a residential neighborhood, I knew that our late afternoon sunlight wasn’t going to make this location pop in the way I wanted it to, so I did what any responsible photographer would do and I brought my heavy-duty strobe and a gigantic soft-box to overpower the sun. The results ended up being a mix of chic polish and authenticity that I am always quite fond of. Of course, that always comes, to some degree, with a tradeoff. Us photographers can’t make as many images when we endeavor to light the scene as well as stage it. So, we created comparatively fewer images throughout this session as we might have had we worked with entirely natural light. Personally, I think that tradeoff is well worth it when the conditions are right.
Check out some of our favorite images from this session below, and if you’re interested in scheduling a maternity shoot or any other kind of portrait session for that matter, check out the Portrait Photography page here on our website.
