Baby Boom | Maternity & Newborn Photography in Portland, Oregon

I'm not sure if it's just because I'm expecting and I'm just noticing babies more or what, but I have had tons of maternity and newborn sessions this season, which I LOVE! Since I'm expecting my little bundle next month, I am going to be blogging some about my journey, as well as giving some tips for other mamas to get their own sweet photos (with their phone cameras or point-and-shoot cameras). 

The Gender Reveal

Around Easter we found out that we are expecting a boy, so we decided to do a very low-key Easter-themed gender reveal, basically to let our Facebook family know that a boy was on the way. For the photo of Jorma and I, I set up my camera, found some shade, and had my mom (who is 5'5") stand on a step-stool to get a flattering angle of the two of us. Trust me, the camera should always be a few inches above the eye-line of the person you're shooting so you're always shooting at a slightly downward angle! Good job on this one, Mom! 

The photo on the right is our dog, Jack. I created a photo montage (right) to share the gender with our Facbebook friends/family, and to email out to other family members who didn't already know, so adding in a photo of Jack with a few props made for some added interest.

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Bump Portraits & Selfies

If you're working on getting a good portrait of yourself, especially as you continue to grow and want to document your monthly/weekly/daily progress, the best way is to get someone else to take the photo. Don't get me wrong, there are copious amounts of bathroom-mirror-bump-selfies in my Instagram feed, but I also appreciated having someone else get some. 

Clients always ask when they should do maternity portraits. There is a long stretch of time during which doing maternity photos will be great, and it's often different based on the Mama. This first set of my maternity photos was taken at about 6 months, and I really had to work to show off my belly. At this point, my belly wasn't super round like we want to see in maternity photos, so I had to do several tricks to make it appear more developed. For my bump portraits, I enlisted my closest most favorite assistants: the husband and the best friend! I had my husband take the single portraits of me, as he's already taller and hears me talk about photo stuff all the time. He has a really good idea of what I like and knows that I will probably ask him to take the same photo at least 10 times so I can look at it and readjust. And then my best friend, who is also fabulous at guiding and encouraging through photo sessions, took the photos of Jorma and I together.

Here is a smattering of the images we came up with during our family vacation (I will be blogging again after my 8-month maternity session in a couple weeks):

My best friend is great at photos as well. After a moment when Jorma and I were frustrated with one another, she suggested just looking at one another and being silly or "lovey"; then she was able to snap this image!

Because my belly wasn't as big as it could have been for these photos, I did a lot of back-arching and messing with my dress to make it appear a little more round.