Ralph & Ana Maternity Shoot

The beach is a beautiful, serene setting for taking photos.  It is romantic.  At 7:30pm there aren’t many distractions in the background.  Except for the beautiful California sunset.  It causes me to take a deep breath and as I exhale, I press the shutter release.  And I try to keep cool in my head and pretend like I knew this shot would come out this way.  But I couldn’t resist.  “Whoa!”  I show Ana and Ralph their photo on the LCD screen of my Nikon D300.  Ralph’s eyebrows raise and Ana smiles.  I look up at the sunset and mentally I’m telling the sun and sky, “thanks”.

Ralph and Ana at Corona Del Mar beach

Ana came prepared to the shoot with 3 changes of clothes and a plan that I can guess came from doing research on flickr or smugmug.  It’s great when people have their own ideas of what they want in their shoot.  I don’t have to do a poll to find out what my target audience wants.

The hands that will hold baby when the time comes

I really appreciated Ralph and Ana’s excitement for this shoot. I could see it in their eyes before we even started. Thanks to Raquel and Mario for telling Ana about my photography and showing them her own maternity photos. I’m sure that contributed to their excitement. Being excited about your photoshoot is always a big help because there’s more energy in your poses and it’s much easier to smile when it’s time. The sun is down and night falls but the excitement is still there.