Maternity Photo Session While in the Hospital
Being a Maternity Photographer for families across the Twin Cities is truly a privilege. My maternity photo sessions are special to families for many reasons. For some women they are a tool to commemorate the wonder of being pregnant. For many others, they are a celebration of the culmination of many years of trying to get pregnant. And for others, they are a way to commemorate the arrival of a “rainbow” baby after losing a precious little one. Maternity photo sessions typically occur when mom-to-be is approximately 32 weeks pregnant. Sessions take place either at my beautiful natural light studio or at an outdoor location in summer or fall. However, just like many things in life, sometimes the unexpected happens and this requires that we be flexible and make adjustments. So what happens if pregnancy complications result in mom being in the hospital before her maternity session? We bring the session to her!
It’s the Love and the Light That Matter, Not Location
For one of my recent Newborn Milestone Collection clients, this very thing happened. She is a new mom of twins who had been admitted to The Mother Baby Center at Abbott Northwestern and Children’s Minnesota just two weeks before her scheduled maternity session. As a Newborn Milestone client, she was to receive three sessions in one year in order to document her pregnancy, the boys arrival through a newborn session, and then their one year milestone. At first we thought we would simply cancel the maternity session and replace it with a 6 month milestone session instead. However, this pregnancy was so long awaited that documenting it was incredibly important to her. With the permission of her care team, we decided to have the session in the atriums and skyways of the hospital.
You might think that a hospital would not be a very attractive location to have a photography session. However, we found beautiful areas with large windows and filled with the morning light! Combining this with the love that this couple had for each other and their babies to come resulted in some incredibly stunning photographs!
Tips for Making a Maternity Session in the Hospital a Beautiful Experience
You might ask, how do you make a hospital photo shoot beautiful? It takes some thinking and planning, but the key is to focus on the little details that you love in images and striving to create a peaceful experience out of an environment that is quite stressful! I was very intentional about what I could bring to the session to make it extra special. I also looked for places in the hospital that would be conducive to the results that I wanted. Beautiful light, clothing with pretty textures and soft tones, and special elements like flowers added beauty to a normally cold environment. I carefully chose skyways that were filled with natural light while trying to avoid areas with overhead lighting or distractions in the background. If I saw things that might be in the background that I knew I didn’t want, I made sure that they were things I could easily edit out.
Making my clients feel blessed during their sessions is really important to me. I strive to provide them with an experience that allows them to focus on the moment and the joy of what is ahead. I also want them to feel beautiful being pregnant. It was important to me that her experience be what it could have been at my studio even though she was not in her ideal place. So I made it my goal to help her and her husband feel blessed and relaxed. The first step was to make getting ready for their session feel effortless. I styled their session by offering visual suggestions for what he should wear from my Men’s Picks page and brought a selection of dresses from my client closet for her to wear. This not only relieved them from any stress of figuring out what to wear, but it also helped her look radiant and feel beautiful! I selected light and airy tones so that the images would not only be timeless but also result in truly ethereal images. We then wandered the skyways and atriums as I placed them in beautiful pockets of morning light with as little distractions as possible.
The Importance of Intentional Photo Editing
Creating beautiful photographs takes so much more than just snapping a few good photos with your camera! Attention to detail, planning your colors and tones, being intentional with how you shoot, good use of light, and then creating art through your editing are all key in less than ideal location settings. I had a vision in mind when I edited these images. I wanted them to not only capture the love and connection that this couple was feeling for each other and their babies, but I also wanted the images to appear ethereal, calm, and intimate even though the environment we were shooting in was a very public place. I edited them in a film like way, with added grain, and tones that were warm and desaturated. I shot many of the images in direct sun so that she looked bathed in light as well as others where she was backlit and I shot from the shadows. I wanted to avoid direct, flat light and aimed for more creative lighting situations. Whatever was lacking in the shooting environment was compensated for by using the beautiful light around us. Although we were able to capture some beautiful backlighting naturally, when I was editing, I added some blur and creative vignettes to some images which added even more visual interest.
Allow Your Images to Tell Your Client’s Story
The most important part of maternity photography is to capture what is happening in your client’s life in this very moment. Pregnancy is one of the most emotional, sometimes stressful, and always impactful moments in a woman’s life. Aim to honor that experience when preparing for your session and especially when you are in the midst of it.
Learn your client’s story prior to your session through your lead inquiry and through a phone or zoom call.
Build trust through good communication and empathy.
Look for tiny ways to bless them.
Be encouraging during your shoot telling them how special they are and how beautiful this moment is.
Most importantly, take the time to listen, reflect on what you learn, and then enjoy creating beautiful art that reflects their experience.
