Lessons

Lesson Info

Maternity Session

I'm going to talk about wraps let's go ahead and actually that your shirt is awesome so this is perfect for this background so let's bring it in here you planned that well what is your name may be nice to meet you I'm sandy thank you for doing this your eyes are beautiful by the way you match your shirt fantastic okay way are going tio not switch them because we're going to do more traditional so we're going to bring them up all right so I'm pretty sure creative live you've never seen anyone shoot this fast this many things in like in success it here going back although I guess the models you could technically go back and forth but I do want to start this segment because we're going to swing into pregnancy session and amy correct amy's our model here so amy come on in here we're going to talk maurine this pregnancy session than shoot because here I really want to talk about body types we're going to cover this in depth later today if we get time for it but amy's been gracious enough to...

come here so I want to make sure we thank you amy and amy to the great job she didn't know what she matched to the background on her eyes match to her shirt so this is good so we're not even gonna tell you you do know this is this is perfect I'm actually going to shoot this as if she were client thatjust came in the studio very rarely does a client walked in dressed so well amy's got great genes on in factor these pre pregnancy jeans or they they're not they're maternity jeans with with clients when I'm working with pregnancy, we actually request that they come in and pre pregnancy jeans and we leave it unbuttoned it's a lot cuter than that panel there. However, hers is hidden perfectly with this outfit, so with pre pregnancy jeans they could button two buttons leave a little bit of it open and we could have that tommy otherwise if you don't mind flashing that one more time otherwise most pregnancy jeans or this panel here that no matter what you do if you squish it down it becomes a big lump of fabric down there which is not very directive you have the perfect body for this by the way this is again not the norm with pregnant women she is perfectly petite and hurt her tummy is straight out her hips everything looks great so far how far along are you she's? Six months so that's another good point she's right at that transition we asked clients to come in between seven and eight months because what our goal is and if you'll turn sideways we can show this we want the tummy to pass the breast line so that's what we're going for in a pregnancy shot she just makes the cut she's also only six months so it's seven months she'd be just past otherwise when they're not when it's fully not past the breast line they depending on the pose they could just look chunky and not really look pregnant unless you keep them this way and say stick it out it doesn't really look as as she doesn't look as pregnant but she's perfect so let's just turn you back this way if she were to come to my studio I would just if she was it seven months I would be half tempted to say come back in two more weeks if I could if it was convenient for her but we're going to go ahead and go now she fortunately for me and unfortunately the world is an easy easy body to work with she has literally perfect proportions her arms still look fantastic everything's looking really good we're going to talk about body structure we're going to show this a little bit later but a couple things what I said when I started photography and what I see a lot of photography is put your hands on your tummy anywhere this tends to be the shot that everybody goes for, you know with pregnancy so we want to talk about refining this and making her look more feminine now on the belt is a baby's tour that we did in two thousand eight people always asked what do you have a formula like the five poses for the baby that was said to have a formula for pregnancy and I said, yeah, I do I'll show you the poses and if you turn and face the light there you go put your hand they're not even in a show so you're perfect one hand down at the bottom of your hip in one hand on top all right, right up there and she sees this tiny one hand here so I would tell them this is posed number one now switch the hands that's po's number two there's your formula and that's pretty much just kidding and that's honestly the truth there's not a there's. No specific formula for posing pregnancy what we're looking for is showing that she has that roundness in that tummy I need to confirm did we branded we re balance the camera so we are balanced. Awesome few things look for this is in any photography right out of the gate she has um sleeves that air covering her risk. This makes her look wider and heavier she's cutting at the heaviest point on her hand. All we need to do is pull it up and we need to remove your watch actually you can rule the cuff up once that would be great, so and this will be on ebay and just a couple minutes skidding celeste has that way we won't lose that. I promise she is a beautiful ring necklace is there always a question? Do they keep the minded to keep them off? If it's a personal item item to them, we keep them on. This is a beautiful and it works well with what she's wearing so I'm not going to request if it were chunky and big I would turn to her and I would say, is your necklace important to you? It's a little big if you want to keep it on no problem if not, I'd prefer to take it off if she says my husband bought it for me, I will say, you know what let's do some with it and it was it would be okay to take it off if she says I'd prefer to keep it on, then it stays on. Most people will go with what you say so she is perfect body, so to speak now what I want to do is I want to take the hand what we're trying to do is open up and show her shake go ahead and do that post post number two again that's you have you got it, I'm just teasing you okay, right there this is what we see in photography all the time I'm going to teach you literally three things that will change everything about your pregnancy session, we have to separate her arm from her body, so the first thing I'm gonna do is have her pulled her arm back way upon her hip there just by doing that, you can see we now have separation, we've created shape and I apologize for touching you. Is that okay? You're officially a model now, so we have roundness, so we've got that now we obviously want to see she's tiny so you want to see a little bit more here? We want that hand to kind of come up over the top, almost faking it there. So now we have body dimension, but we still have a very stagnant shot. So the last thing and I'm going to actually test my lights and camera before I make you do the last thing, because I want to actually show you the difference that it made so that's okay, thanks. I haven't even looked at the light yet, too, so I need to see where it's falling because again, in my studio, I work with studio strobes there's no extraneous light going on, and so I could actually see where the lightest falling and make some good decisions there I am so that you just came so perfectly ready for this that's beautiful great light we've got a great kicker now we're breaking a rule already and if I'll see who's smart enough to figure out what's wrong here, did you get it? No anyone you got it tummy away knows towards the light because I'm so all we're gonna do is the same position turn around this way because remember tell me away he's going to give her that shadow knows towards the light what we don't want to do is have light way down here she doesn't need any light down here we're not the focus not here our kicker light separator light is going toe like this tell me the roundness of the tummy this light we don't even want it it's on her face we don't want it to hit her bottom or anything near that sow right there. So now we have tell me away knows towards let's switch hands so we're going to switch both post number one, slide away actually let's, do this in succession keep your hand away tied in like this is where I started even tighter. This is where I started photography we're going to show you this so that you can actually see it in the stills um now I want you to turn your noes towards the light even a little bit more and I won't have you brush off that being just a little bit if you don't mind if I touch your hair that's okay thank you so I want you to turn and I'm gonna keep this very so stagnant because we're going to go through exactly where I started and where I struggled and we're gonna perfect it thank you my dear okay so no swords let's say at least knew that tell me away knows towards there's a lot of things wrong with this image so we're going to start with this this is wrong um and let's just get just for the fun of it knows this way soft smile eyes here beautiful right there good job gonna clean it up so this is the beginning point let's make it prettier we're gonna bring that hand way upon the hip that's going to slim her down and separate her arm from the body this is still wrong in my opinion but let's talk through it so this is fixing the problem we've got a right there perfect my dear knows towards the light a little bit more I don't know why I'm perfecting proposes that all wrong but there you go that's just me so now we're getting better things like this make me crazy so I'm gonna pull that wrinkle down under here so we're getting closer the next problem is her body she's super stagnant he's a straight there's nothing really dynamic. We all know about s curves that curving of the body to give her more feminine shape hard when you have a belly and you're carrying a basketball right? But this is the way we solve that problem. If you pop your friend he up and cross it a crush or go across your body with it. There you go now you see what happened here this is still not right, but you can see we're starting to create that dynamic s curve so now good girl, little soft smile just a little bit brief threw them out it'll be there it is right there looking better but the final piece to perfecting this would be we're goingto arch your back a little bit we're going to drop your shoulder towards a lot your nose goes towards a light there in his eyes back at the camera. Good. I want that gorgeous smile right there. Good girl right there look right here and just say I'm gorgeous good girl right there, isaac the light for a second. Good. Now just look down at the ground, no smile down, down, down your nose goes down like a human and just tilt your head this way a little bit more my dear right there and close your eyes for a second there we go just like that. Now just open your eyes and look back at me. Beautiful right there that's fantastic. Okay, stay there. Don't move! You just got that hair in the ei so I'm just gonna bring that back so I can perfect that a lot of times you're gonna see me look to say look down. So look down again the reason I'm doing that turn your chin towards the light a little bit more extend your chin out a little bit more very good look down and now I want you to look back at me, see what happens now just bring your chin up and look at me. Look at the difference between these two that's just her looking at me which is pretty but now again stick your chin out look down you're faking looking all the way straight down, nose down a little bit more and just your eyes come back there it is that's gorgeous. You see how that's a little more dramatic in her neck her next a little more stretch. So this is simply the simplest way to take a pregnant woman and to get the dynamic bodies now there's a million things we could do to her she's not in an outfit that I would have her leaning and arching but the more things you could come up with just for fun we'll do a couple you have to again pretend like this is a fabric rap for a nude or something like that let's talk about nude first have a think she was a really good ugo okay yeah let's go ahead and just pop that will actually look good on here so let's just pop that off there you don't need music for this very good okay thank you so yeah that's perfect ok let's pretend like she has her top off so now we're going to go let's do what? What traditionally face forward and this is kind of what photographers used usually when I started I'm not picking on anyone but when I started just wrap your arms like this this was sort of the how to solve that problem but you could see what you've done is not help through it all that doesn't look attractive I'm gonna photograph it just for the sake of the training purposes so we have there it is right there not very attractive she's not looking very pregnant because she's facing forward and this does not look nice at all especially if she were bare chested honestly you can tell the difference between her breasts and her elbows esso to soften that up there a lot of ways we could do this we can use one arm to wrap around just across because we're only covering certain parts and the second arms you khun touch here you could just you know, just bring it in gently here we don't want to ever see the back of the hands we'd want to see the risk just you side of your face you can bring your hands up a little tighter so we just have to make sure that she's covering herself across the top and look down that way good you can even pull up and grab the back of your neck if you like now, if she's covered, we can exaggerate it even more so now you can bring your hands let's, get your let's, get you the right position to me this way actually face out and take one step back right there and just wants to back right there. So now let's say she has a tube top on which we're going to show you in a second. Now we can open it up a lot more now we can bring your hands up, so just bring him up above your body. We don't want to see this so we might bring this arm across the body here and just have her hold on to that and you're gonna be arching and your nose is going back that way little separation here do you see that? How she's just becoming very feminine pop that knee up again turn it away from here now we're getting these feminine curves I can use this elbow if I have to to cover things if I need to but we can start molding a body we tell pregnant women were very carefully tell him it's kind of like being in yoga you have to be very careful stay in that position. I might catch a shot of that just so that we can kind of show body dynamics um knowing that clothing is not necessarily perfect k arch everything those back towards the light good write their separation between your hand and again outfit not right pot's right really torque your nose towards that light good look down at the ground arch your back a little bit more push that tummy out knows way way down almost to your shoulder there it is eyes back at me good right there and there's a little more drama for you nose back to the light a little tiny bit more good in fact look into the middle of the light right there good just quietly say highlight there goes relaxing her face a little bit you've got it. Okay, so that's just simple now we're gonna talk about fabric wraps you're doing great thank you, my dear. Okay, we buy billions and trillions of miles of fabric and we always cut up what we call abroad stop just a little top helen makes these little she just makes little buttons and puts ties on them and creates these little closures I typically was my work just make enough and uh natural not and then that way I could do that but it just depends on how you helen were very different in the sense of the way we finesse things so I'm just gonna leave her little um button on here now we're gonna keep you dressed but basically I just want you to take that and make yourself a little broad here so we're just gonna and I'm gonna wrap it around you it looks really cool okay, so we just make these so that we could tie them on sorry, I know you feel ridiculous but you can see we have a broad now this didn't cost anything and it was very easy to do now this is sort of the creme de la creme people are always ask king how do you do the whole fabric, sweetie kind of thing gonna show you some magic I don't know how many feet of uh eric this is could I get that background switch so I could get a couple shots? Actually, you know what? You have a nude bra on if we can hide you back behind something would you mind taking the shirt off? You're comfortable with that because typically, I mean there's no reason we can't shoot this right and give her some beautiful images. So let's, get her hidden if we can get some ladies just to put up a curtain, please, we're doing that. I'm rooting for that, too. Yeah, yeah. That's exactly what I want. I only need three quarters, so we're good. All right, so we're gonna actually have her change. You're gonna hold this up? What do you mind if I'm back here? So we're covered, so I'm gonna undo you hear somebody grab this side just so that I could help her real quick? Uh huh. Quick change room. So just take your top off, and then what we're gonna do is put this over your bra and then we're gonna have to take off your straps. You're just kind of took him under were good. Just tire up there thinking I'm so sorry to make you do such a woman. You just had extra maybe show up today and we're pretty hard. So just take these straps and took him down just taken off and will hide them in the broad. May see that makes sense. So friendly e go out to dinner tonight, all right, now, do you mind being seen like this? No good okay, ladies you pull that away that wasn't too painful. Oh, you know what? Wait she's not side yeah oh no actually I mean the show we're not going to be putting them on internet but you do know the show is being recorded correct? Are you okay with that? Okay, good confirm ok, so what we've done is we've created but let's get that background up friend and if you can all right let's get a look at gene's by the way holy cow! Those are so cute oh, my ass to get joe's cheese where were they when I was having babies? Good heavens okay, let me step out of the way I just recalled all right, my dear turned back around with amy so now she's there the only thing I would work on it a little bit of this fuzziness I would tuck that in or I would have her take it but it's not critical if you can come stand right back up here again. There's no reason I didn't want to rush you through this and not show you the difference. I mean, her body is beautiful, so we have the maternity pants whenever I do this the fabric perhaps I don't have my clients take off their pants, so for you guys out there who are going, can I photograph pregnant women my pregnant women are never make. I mean, I can do news, but the majority of people who come in who want fabric crafts do not want news. They want to be covered. So this is a great way to do it because I would tell her how to tie her. I would have her tied that on herself. I'm gonna have you just took that under your jeans are just I mean, not down as low as you can go. And now I can show you how to do this and when get or a couple of really nice shots before have finished, um, I don't want a lot of clamps on her body. I don't want things because, you know, if you put a clamp, you're gonna have an orange tag coming out of her bottom. So I'm gonna show you a magic trick if you can turn around face that way. Um, we take the end of the fabric. I'm going to take it here. I have one in I have the continuous fabric here and they make an awesome little knot. So given all the secrets away is not fair. All right? We have not. We took it, we have a cute little bottom good, now we've got this cool little swee'pea fabric, anything cool, huh? All right. And no clamp and no anything else. I don't have to do a single other thing. Now turn your tummy back towards me. If you don't mind, we're gonna back. Make sure your subject is in the exact spot you want her to be in before you wrapped her up. So turn all the way. This when you were so cute. This is great. All right. And here we go. Go and left your toe for a second. So I, technically, if I was just doing three quarters, khun, shoot this as is, which is no problem. I'm going to wrap it for you just so that you can see it. This is a lot of fabric. So, uh, we're gonna do some hurling here, all right? I need one. Clamp. A wide stance. Yeah, just a little bit. Wife. You don't fall over, all right? We're just gonna pull the rest. Anything clamp? Yeah. Really? All right. I need a clamp. It's. Okay. If I don't have one, I could take it. Just don't move your knees for now. So, yeah, it also is a slippery fabric so it could slide. But you're just not gonna move, actually. Bend this knee let's, get that curve going there even a little bit more. You can just wiggle it out there. I'm a section in the show gonna turn her body back. There we go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I don't want to see this clamp so I'm gonna go up and under the fabric without pinching the subject's leg is important. There you go. Now we've hidden the clamp could do a full sweep. I'm not going to shoot a false because its ground, but I need it actually spread way out. So that waken sort of if you can get it filled here, I might be able to get all the way down to a coat like I get it. Okay, you were awesome. So just like we did before hand here pulled back. Good. You got it. Hand on the top nose back. Now this seems like I'm doing the same pose over and over which I technically am in the studio. We would have heard I'm going to show you a whole series of stills later, of all the different poses would come up with this is about body dynamics and working with the pregnant body, so same thing nice and tall we're gonna turn your body this way let's get your nose back towards the light. We're just gonna do that same siri's one more time and give her something that she can have that's a little more unique. Okay, cross that leg over knows that way. All right, that's beautiful. Let me just check that kicker, okay? I'm gonna need my ladder for second beautiful so we have that nice shadow you're looking at the still you see that nice shadow here, which is exactly what I want I don't want light here I want that will slim her down even though she's tiny I still gonna give her a little light just to fill it in but I don't want to much go that way with it I'm gonna bring this up a little bit I just want her eyes so really dramatic we're going tor gonna pop that lay across you're gonna twist that shoulder very feminine line you know drop your shoulder that way looking right here to start just keep your eyes right appear beautiful right there a couple shots nice and soft smile good thank you right there. Beautiful eyes into the light now beautiful that score just now looked down at the floor again all the way down like you let your chin come down there it is turn your nose toward your shoulder again a little bit more there it is right there it's a little dramatic her hair fell over eyes but just opened chin up a tiny bit and eyes at me it just goes like kind of the drama little shadow on the eye that's really pretty now just take your own hand and kind of pull it back and when you pull it back look into that light just kind of torque your body that way so just do that one more time good right there now there it is right there good girl now go ahead and let's pretend like you're topless so we're going to take your hands and instead of pressing him like this we just want real soft butterfly arms so just kind of nice little fingertips there you go just like that noticed torque and drop that shoulder again good nose goes back towards the light again doing a great job thank you thank you, my dear nose chin toward your shoulder again there it is he's getting dramatic over there she's got it pop that knee a little bit more and arch your back let's pop that curve there in his eyes here good right there and now look down that way for a second beautiful and now look up at me I want to sauce my little bit of breathing through the mouth right there good girl that's gorgeous okay, that's. Fantastic. All right, we're gonna let her go so we could get some of these babies in let's. Give her a round of applause. Thankyou. So that's it painless.