A Studio Pregnancy Session with Carol

With Carol's due date becoming more and more immanent, we decided to shift gears a little for this session, and actually focus on the pregnancy itself. For almost all the sessions we've had together since we began working on the project, we have been working on a series of images following the evolving pregnancy, but have actually spent almost no time photographing the pregnancy beyond those three sets of images

Digital infrared original

I set up my flash lighting and a black backdrop to work again, and we began working. As with almost all my photo sessions, we began with a series of portrait, balancing the beautiful curves of Carol's belly against her serene face. Once these were finished, we moved onto more body centric images, working our way from some standing pose to a series with Carol lying on the floor. It was important to work in this order (standing, then lying down) to ensure that Carol didn't tire out. The session was taking place at the end of the day, and while Carol was vibrant and full of energy, I didn't want to tire her our any more than necessary, regardless of how keen she was to model.

Digital infrared original, 6 frame stitch

By the end of the session, I was very pleased with what I had seen through he viewfinder. Though the room we were in was small, I'd been able to control the lighting enough to get the effect I was looking for, with smooth, luminous highlights and a deep black background.

Digital infrared original, 9 frame stitch

I am not sure if this will be our last pregnancy session or not (Carol's due date in in less than two weeks), but as I was packing equipment up to head for home, I knew that we'd made some beautiful images of the peak of the pregnancy, singular photographs to work alongside the documentary series we'd been working on for so many months!