Tips on How to Take Maternity Photos at Home.

Great DIY picture ideas on how to take maternity photos at home.

I will talk you through some basic maternity poses, which are always a hit at my studio as well.

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Let's start.

#1 Understanding light.

This is one of the most important aspects of maternity photography. If you have good quality light, you are already halfway there.

In this example I took the photographs during winter time in Scotland. It was an overcast day and the light was pretty dark. It was a normal Scottish day!

I'm really pleased with this, as the quality of light was pretty poor on the day and we used very basic camera settings. Basically this could be your worse case scenario light wise. There were small windows and one set of French doors. If you have a room brighter than that with larger windows, it will be much easier to achieve good exposure for images. Resulting in not so dark images as mine.

Saying that, it is not necessarily easier if you have lots of light and you don't know how to control it, especially if the sun is shining straight into the room.

Ideally you'll have daylight curtains and this will mean that the light will be more diffused and softer on your body. I like to say that this creates a more forgiving light.

During pregnancy photography sessions, I never use a flat light, but instead opt for 45 degree, side lit or back lit portraits. We need to show off your shape and correctly using the light will effectively show your belly. Flat light has no shape. Its nice for your selfie portrait, but doesn't show shape of your belly.

If you have a lot of light in the room you will have light portraits. If you'd prefer darker portraits, simply close the curtains and leave just a little gap to let the light come through.

In our case study we wanted all the light we could get as it was pretty dark, especially in the bedroom.

Our goal was to create some moody images. This is great if you are not that confident about your body and feel a bit shy. With this lighting effect you can concentrate on your belly.

#2 Remote control or self timer and tripod.

In this particular case, the family had a decent DSLR camera and we used a remote control to trigger the images. This makes life easier because you can take lots of photographs and have a wider choice of images. Not every camera has this function. Another option is to use a self timer function. This means a lot of running backwards and forwards to achieve that perfect shot. During this shoot, we had a toddler with us, so it made coordinating everyone and pressing the self timer button quite tricky.

Your partner can of course take the photos, but if he wants to feature in them, then a remote control would be useful. If you photograph with a "point and shoot", then a self timer is likely to be your only option.

In this photo you can see the clicker in his hand, but at least the whole family is in the shot.

TIP:

Here is our own pregnancy portrait we took with remote control.

You can see remote in my hand. This makes so much easier to do photos as kids move about and you can sit with them and keep creating portraits. Love more candid moment approach too.

#3 Watch the background.

Make sure there is not too much clutter, clothes and weird shapes like chairs and lamps. Try to have as simple a background as possible.

In this particular example we decided to do a few darker shots in an open plan living room. To have the best use of the light I put the kitchen in the background, which was definitely not good for the photo.

Instead I noticed that there was a window behind, so I just closed the blinds to create this image. We need to get kitchen area as dark as possible. I applied a strong vignette in post process and it was finished. It has a nice shape and light.

TIP:

The reason why you don't photograph next to the window during sunny day is that light and shadow ratio is really high. You have a very bright side of the body and very dark other side of the body. Instead move your body slight away from the curtain. Follow where the light falls/direction.

#4 If you don't want to expose your belly, wear fitted clothing.

#5 Make a shot list.

This sounds very obvious, but preparation is your best friend. If you are prepared and know in advance what poses you will be photographing, you can decide what clothing you will wear in each image. These are two less things for you to worry about on the day. You will be playing with your camera and trying to get things right, so you won't want to be thinking about your clothes.

Why not take a look on Pinterest for some ideas, or at the photos on my website.

TIP: Camera Settings.

Camera settings: In this particular case I didn't want the family to fiddle too much with the settings and manual functions on their camera. If you have no idea how your camera works, then here's my advice for both DSLR and "point and shoot" cameras.

- Set the image quality at the highest setting. This will ensure that you have the maximum amount of data to work with when you edit the images. If you know a bit more about photography then the RAW format will work for you, but for now let's stick with the simple JPEG format.

- Put the camera into the auto setting. Yes you heard me right: AUTO. These days cameras are pretty clever when it comes to determining exposure and colour temperature.

- To adjust the exposure of the image, I always recommend to go by something called exposure compensation where you can underexpose or overexpose images by 2 stops. For most of this particular project I used the -1 setting as I wanted the highlights to be retained. This is especially true when using the JPEG image setting. Only backlit images were set to +2 to overexpose the window.

#6 Make up and Hair.

It sounds very obvious, right? But for lots of mums-to-be, make-up and hair isn't top of their "to do" list. For the sake of making your life easier when you're editing your images, and to feel pleased with the results, bear in mind that it's worth applying a little natural make up and fixing your hair.

This will also help you to feel that these photographs are marking a special occasion.

#7 Plan your session around 6-8 weeks before due date.

Your belly will grow and you will feel heavier every day and also less willing to do anything. I tend to photograph maternity sessions now around 8 weeks before due date. Belly is nice, but not massive and mums feel more willing to do poses and experiment with ideas.

Ideas on some poses and set ups at home.

Here I wanted to photograph both the child and the family altogether in a bedroom. The toddler really loved the camera so I gave him mine to keep him entertained. To keep a toddler's attention is a whole other class!

Try different angles.

Try to photograph from above too. It's not easy, but sometimes it can result in some nice images which will show your belly well from an unusual angle.

Play with creating silhouette images.

One of the most popular ideas you can do at home is to create silhouette images. These can feature either the mum-to-be alone, couples or the whole family.

There are different poses on a sofa that you can use for maternity photographs. Move the sofa in front of a window for a nicer light, get the whole family on the sofa and cuddle up. Whatever you do, make sure that your bump is very visible. This is the purpose of the session, after all.

This particular family had some photographs taken next to a window, and I was keen to try some darker images too. I suggested involving their toddler, and it was easiest to sit him on his mum's lap, where he could talk and interact with her. Try getting your toddler to read a book, play with your belly and generally keep him or her busy.

TIP: If you have lots of space, please step away as far as you can and zoom into your subject. This is called background compression. I always do this during home sessions to avoid unwanted objects and to concentrate on the subjects I am photographing.

In this case I had to avoid photographing objects on the wall, so I decided to place the camera further away and zoom in on the subjects.

Armands

Special thanks to my friends who were willing to pose for me and learn something new.

I hope this will help you to create some fantastic maternity images by yourself in your own home environment.