Staci and Andy Maternity Shoot - Part 1

I have soo many pictures I love from this session I just had to break it up into two parts.  Staci and Andy are two of my best friends and I just had so much fun taking pictures of them.  Staci just glows and Andy always makes us laugh.  She's 36 weeks along in this session and I really can't wait for my first newborn shoot in just a few weeks!













Some photo tips real quick....

When we first got to the beach the sun was still really high and the light really harsh. You'll notice most of these shots were taken under the pier. By starting there we were able to shoot in nice even open shade for a while, and when the sun got a little lower we were able to move into locations in front of the water (which you'll see in Part 2!)

I used a reflector clipped to my tripod and buried in the sand to help reflect some light on their faces while under the pier. I usually struggle to hold my own reflector while shooting if I don't have someone with me to help hold it.  This is the first time I tried using clamps to attach my reflector to my tripod and it was a revelation! It was SO helpful, I know I'll be doing this every time now! The reflector helped me get nice catchlights in their eyes. Some of the backgrounds were a little blown out because the light was so bright behind them, but I was able to even this out in Lightroom by using the recovery slider and the adjustment brush to paint on a lower exposure just on the really blown out parts.

The shots of the jumping were still in harsh light but because they were far away from me it didn't blind them. The sky was a bit blown out in the unedited pictures in order to get them properly exposed but I used the luminance slider in Lightroom to lower the luminance of the color blue to darken the sky back up.

Hope these tips helped! Stay tuned for Part 2 later this week!

And check out Staci's mama blog at Love the O's.  She's due pretty much any day now!!