My first maternity self portrait

For those of you who regularly read my blog ramblings you know that I never had my pregnancy photographs taken with my first child. I had a photographer hired and ready to take my portraits originally at 32 weeks. She ended up having a conflict and was unable to reschedule until I would have been 36 weeks. Ordinarily with a first time mom this would not have been a problem, as many first time moms actually deliver after their due date. However our dear son had other plans in mind.

We lovingly refer to him today as our early bird 😉 He arrived at 35 weeks and a few days. And the only pregnancy photograph I have from his time were taken at my baby shower. Let me just say that not having a full length mirror at home was a terrible mistake for my non-fashion conscious self. No one will see those photographs but my kiddos. This self portrait will hopefully be my first of several maternity self portraits. I have grand plans to take many. I will also be hiring a maternity photographer to photograph the whole family well in advance of this child’s arrival.

Technical details

For those that are interested in how I accomplished this maternity self portrait. I have a large sliding glass door in my home studio space. I covered the doors with sheer white curtains and played with my camera settings until I was happy with the results. Landing on an aperture setting of f/4.5 and exposing at 1/100 of a second. Then I set up my tripod and set my camera to self timer.

I really do love technology. It took a few takes to get my pose and place set be myself. After I had all the images I thought I would need I edited them to black and white in Adobe Lightroom. I think they turned out alright for my first try. I did decide I need a new dress or two for my later photographs. If anyone has any recommendations on where to find beautiful maternity dresses please send them along. Thanks for letting me share.

-alicia