Maternity shoot

I dedicated 2010 to trying to grown and practice more portrait photography. I was excited when my friend Jennifer asked me to do some natural style maternity shots. I met Jennifer a few years ago while taking a photography course and got a chance to meet her husband Stefano during the shoot. They were well prepared for the shoot as they were nicely coordinated in black shirts and jeans. Solid colours are key when doing portraits, specially classy portraits where you want viewers to focus on the models and not the lines and shapes in their clothes.
I went their place earlier this week and we ended up having about 50 mins of shooting time. These were taken mostly in their living room where they had a nice big window that was shining some nice light, which is a must when trying to go for natural, "zen" style shots.

What did I learn? While I like to allow people to pose themselves with only slight direction from me (keeps things natural and organic), I still need to pay more attention to the small details. Plan some, but not too much. I had looked through some maternity shots online to get my creative mind going. The morning of the shoot I just scribbled 6-7 ideas down on a piece of paper, but once you get started, you just move from one thing to another based on the location, the light and the inspiration that hits you (or the models) at the time.

So here are my fave shots...