Great Expectations: A Maternity Shoot with The Camera’s Eye

Autumn in upstate New York is the PERFECT time to take advantage of the natural beauty for a fall photo shoot 🙂 For example, this recent maternity session with Leslie and her husband Chaz!
LC051
LC083
Leslie and Chaz never did engagement photos, so they wanted to have a romantic feel to their session with The Camera’s Eye – though we did manage to get some shots of Leslie alone as well 🙂
LC027
LC020
And we can’t forget Sam the cat – he followed us EVERYWHERE, probably knowing that Leslie and Chaz are cat people with two of their own at home.
LC001
We were looking for somewhere rural, where we could get a vintage feel to the shoot, and of course capture autumn’s beauty. The weather cooperated fully and it was a perfect day!
LC075
Leslie shared how wonderful it was to have an hour devoted completely to the baby they were so excited to meet, and in such a beautiful environment to boot.
LC033
Now the next step? Newborn session photos! Looking forward to meeting the little bambino!
LC085

Supporting The Valley Kiwanis

Every spring, The Camera’s Eye donates several packaged portrait sessions to The  Valley Kiwanis to help with all the good they do year round.  This year, we packaged one for a 2013 Senior, one for a newborn and one for any woman whatsoever… The Madonna Session.  Because this is a new concept and a little different, my phone is ringing off the hook with this question, “what on Earth is a Madonna Session???”  One woman asked…”What is a Madonna Session… MY HUSBAND won it for me!”    I thought that was super sweet because I’m sure he didn’t know either!   Some women may roll their eyes at that one… I give him a thumbs up for trying something new and taking a risk that it might be something special for her on Mother’s Day.  🙂  Obviously, he got a lil’ nervous because she called this week and Mother’s Day is May 13th, hee hee.  ; )-

So a Madonna Session is a session that simply celebrates Women.  Single women, working women, retired women; Moms…moms with 5 children, stay-at-home moms, moms with babies in their bellies, moms who split their lives in sections to be all the people they need to be in one day: wife, mom, money-maker, house cleaner and fabulous chef!  You  think of her and we want to celebrate her life by giving her a session where the world slows down a bit.  Coffee, tea and mid-morning snacks to start the session, a hair and makeup stylist and then some quality portraiture to make her feel incredible.   And it doesn’t have to be our style…. it’s about her style.  She’s a gardener… well then,  we’re going to photograph in the garden.   We usually invite her best friend or sister or mother for some solid estrogen support and then we photograph that person with her because obviously she’s there for a very good reason… 

Here’s a few samples of a new mom and an expecting mom.  It just happened to be that my most recent Madonna shoots revolved around pregnancies, but they don’t have to at all. If you have a question about a Madonna Session that I didn’t answer… do post and ask.  I bet someone else is thinking the very same one!

Mother/Baby Connections at The Camera’s Eye


We’re social beings.  We connect, network, and converse with friends, colleagues, and family all day, everyday.   There’s one connection to me that’s more precious than any other… and that’s the connection between a mom and her baby.  I love it!

I’ve been photographing babies for 12 years – from 5 days old and up.  I can truly empathize with fathers who say, “no one has the ‘touch’ like Mommy when baby is crying.” I can do all the same things she does in a shoot and the minute she lays a finger on her lil’ one, WhaLaaa!… Baby’s all better.


There’s a thrill in capturing that connection for a mom and an even bigger one knowing she can show it to her child when he or she is older.  They grow and grow and grow away from us and sometimes all we want is to “remember when…”

 

One mom put it best when she said, “Sometimes I want  a day without anyone clinging to me and then I think to myself… I better take all the clinging I can get now, because soon they won’t even want to stand next to me in public!”  How true is that??!!!  ha Ha!  Those are the moments you look at a picture like this and close your eyes to remember…. Aaaahh.  🙂