Maternity photos -- suggestions and tips needed

Corry

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Hey guys...I'm doing my first maternity photos Saturday. I will be shooting both mom and dad. (Very close friend of mine, fairly informal shoot)

...I don't have a whole heck of a lot as far as equipment goes (300D, 50mm 1.8, kit lens, lensbaby, cheap flash, tripod) and my at home 'studio' isn't set up right now...and if it was, it's not really ideal for this anyway.

Thier house isn't the best as far as lighting and areas to shoot, either.

I don't have much (any) money to work with, though if I can swing it I'm gonna drop by JoAnne Fabrics and pick up a big peice of smooth, black fabric and find some way to hang it (unless you guys have a better suggestion)

I need ideas for poses and methods of working around my difficult surroundings. I plan to do some outdoors, though I would prefer to do most of them in a more intimate setting.

If anyone has links to thier own or other people's maternity work, I'd love those, too (for inspiration and ideas!)


Thanks guys!
 
Use window light if you can, it's cheap and usually pretty easy.

What I did for the only maternity shoot I've done...was to print off a bunch of shots that I found on the internet (just cheap B&W laser prints)...and used them as examples. Then I let the model/client look through them. Even if she didn't pick any in particular, it gave me a good idea of the type of poses she wanted and was comfortable with.

I have a couple of the shots in the Portrait Gallery section of my site.
 
Depending on the the type of people, how about out of doors? The whole nature, thing meshes very well with pregnancy and a secluded foresty area either early in the morning, or later in the afternoon (along with a few cheap reflectors read: posterboard) might make for an interesting setting...
 
I have a couple of shoots on my site but they were also my first two people shoots ever, so I have improved quite a bit since then.

If you go do an advanced search for maternity under the professional gallery, it has quite a few examples you can look at.
 
Use window light if you can, it's cheap and usually pretty easy.

Window light – if it's not direct sunlight streaming in – constitutes a beautiful big softbox.
So, in the northern hemisphere, a north facing window is best.

You can also use a reflector to fill in the shadows. Get a foamcore panel from a hardware/home improvement/Home Depot type of store. Surely you can afford that?
 
Yep, I do love window light...however that's one of the issues that is going to be difficult for me...the way thier house is set up, there aren't any areas to shoot windows with decent window light...that's a big part of what has me so frustrated. I do plan to try my best, however.


....actually, I just got an idea. Hmmm... I might be able to do something with a little furniture moving.


And tirediron, I mentioned in my original post that I plan on doing some outdoors, but I don't want them all out doors. I want some that are more intimate, indoor pictures.

Mike, as for looking through things, Friday nights are my girl's night with the mother, and we can probably look around online together then....I did tell her to be looking out for pose ideas she'd like. :)
 
Fleece works really well as far as the black fabric goes. And if you don't have a real reflector some silver material could help a little.
 
and tirediron, I mentioned in my original post that I plan on doing some outdoors, but I don't want them all out doors. I want some that are more intimate, indoor pictures.

Oops... apparently I don't read so good any more.
 
I saw some cute ideas on Flickr. One had some little tiny baby shoes sitting on the moms stomach (she was laying in the grass) I just loved the way it looked. :)

Do you have a field or something like that you can go to...get some pretty, airy, natural shots along with the more intimate ones?
 
Hmmm...I'm not sure about a field.

The thing that makes the outdoor shots difficult is, the places I have in mind to go are rather busy when it's nice out. :S It's going to be hard for her to be comfortable in those areas.

That does sound like a cute pose idea. :)
 
Hey Corry,

Indoors, low light may mean you needing to leave on the house lights if you have no off camera strobes handy. This may cause some WB issues. Take the time to make sure you have a 18% grey card handy so you can optimize the WB and concentrate on exposure, technique and poses, that or do a lot of chimping or shoot RAW and care about it in PP.

For poses, I could offer you 10-20 ideas, but let me help you out more by suggesting that you go to flickr.com and doing a search for maternity pics. Then the pose ideas rise from 20 to thousands of ideas. :)

Also, you said that natural lighting is an issue... is it really an issue or was it only an issue at the time of day you were checking it out? You may have to change the time of the day to shoot at, but, check it out and pay attention to that aspect.
 

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