Maternity Photo Shoot Tips

I was reading through some past posts today and realized I had mentioned our photo shoot with Amber in my Week 35 Survey Post.  I had promised I would post other pictures once we received them and forgot to do so. 

As I've mentioned a few times on this blog, I don't care too much for bare belly pictures.  I don't know why.  It's not that I think the belly is an ugly thing...ok, actually, I kinda do, but it's just that I like how it looks better with clothes on top of it! haha.  I have nothing against other people taking bare belly pictures.  In fact, I occasionally have thought they're cute.  They just aren't my cup of tea.  So, when our friend Amber came over to take our maternity shots, she knew my criteria and we had an amazing time taking pictures.

I thought I would post these to help other women with my dilemma who want nice maternity shots without their belly showing.  I had a really hard time finding these kinds of pictures on the internet.  Whenever I put in maternity photos on Google, nearly all of them had women in their bras and undies.  Yeah...no thanks. I want Liliana to look at these later and not think "ewww gross Mom!" 

So, thanks to Amber's guidance, I can now give some tips to have a great maternity photo shoot:

(1) DO include your partner in some of the shots;

 I wanted my husband in a bunch of the pictures, because after all, he did create half of that belly!  Plus, he is such a hands on dad and helps more than you'd ever imagine. 

(2) DO make sure to take them before your last month;

This belly looks pretty big right? 

Well, that's because I was going to deliver the next week, so if we hadn't taken these pictures at week 35, we would have missed out on our maternity shots!

(3) DO take some in the nursery;

 This is her toy chest, which currently serves as a wipes and diapers chest. 

One day though, it'll be filled with all her goodies.  

 Little did we know our precious girl would be sleeping in this crib so soon!

These two pictures from the nursery were my favorite of the whole photo shoot.

(4) DO try cute and different ideas; and 

 Since Evan is less than a year away from being Dr. Lacefield, our friend had this great idea!  

Our Christmas card announcement had him with the stethoscope too, but since I was so far along in these pictures, he could actually hear Liliana's heartbeat!  

 This was my favorite idea that our photographer had!  

She just took pieces of Scrabble and spelled out Liliana's name. If your babies name is much longer, it might not work, but at least try the nickname because I thought these were really cute.

(5) DO wear a bright colored shirt!

 We wore two outfits, one with black on and one with green on.  Amber told us to wear bright and she was right.  I liked the green outfits much better than the black ones.

The last good thing about bright shirts:

the photographer can mess with it more when doing special effects.

Hope you enjoyed these shots and got some ideas of your own!