Natalie & Sergio Maternity Fairy Tale Shoot
Natalie & Sergio: Maternity
Natalie & Sergio were directed to me through a great friend, Cassidy. Cassidy and I have worked together on various projects over the years, you've seen her in many images if you've gone through my portfolio and blog, and is always pushing my work and sending her friends and contacts my way, which I hugely appreciate. Natalie and Sergio are good friends with Cass so when they decided they wanted to do a maternity photoshoot before their daughter was born, Cassidy mentioned Kevin Vyse Photography.
Originally we were supposed to do this shoot the weekend before, but due to a few minor medical hiccups, we pushed the shoot back a week to ensure Natalie would be good to shoot and this actually worked out better for us because the weather had a chance to turn around as well and leave us with a somewhat warm day to shoot the out door portion.
We had two parts to this session: 1) Indoors at Natalie & Sergio's, where we would use an empty room that they were renovating to be their bedroom, which was perfect because there wasn't anything in it but a white couch and a dark grey-ish blue Shiplap accent wall which was perfect, gave some texture to the images. We started out doing some clean shots of Natalie using the windows in the room and it's beautiful light, did a couple of her alone then some with sergio in them as well.. and a few with both of them on the couch as well.
2) We moved outdoors to a nice spot in London near the river that had some wooded area's and some walking paths. We utilized the woods and the edge of the water bank to create some original shots. You might have noticed that in the title of this blog I said "Fairy Tale Shoot " .. well.. thats where this came into effect. While we were out in the woods getting ready to start shooting, I had this vision pop into my head when I saw Natalie standing there in her vibrant red maternity dress and flower crown up against the earthy tones of the woods. This vision was a new take on an old fairy tale... Little Red Riding hood.. but now, Red Riding Hood is all grown up, still out in the woods, in love and pregnant with her first child. The weather was a bit gloomy, grey sky very soft filtered light, and since it was the beginning of April, it was still chilly and there were not leaves on the trees, rainy .. it's spring.. so instead of trying to fight the elements and make these images look all light and sunny, I decided to work with them and not against. Natalie and her baby were the "life" in the shots.. the woods were dark and earthy.. no real life to them yet as spring is the birth of life ... so we used this to create the images.
Some of the images were all natural ambient light to keep the balance of the light even, kind of working Natalie into the woods. Once we had the ambient shots finished up, I wanted to really play up this idea of Natalie and the baby as the "life" in the images... so I broke out the Octabox and speedlights focusing the light onto Natalie and her baby bump letting the light fall off and making the background darker allowing her to be the focus of the image. Using this lighting style not only allows Natalie to stand out in the image but it also helps with that Fairy Tale kind of look.. almost like a painting with some editing, giving it a different look and feel to the viewer.
Over all, this shoot was a success, I had a great time photographing these two, they were so welcoming, laid-back and fun.. Natalie had a great time "This is so much fun " she said. Pictures have been delivered and I'm so happy to have more happy clients. I'd like to thank them for choosing Kevin Vyse Photography, it was a pleasure!
Shutter Click.
Kevin Vyse.
Cody & Carly | Maternity
With a nice little waterfall, a small river and a park in the woods, Cody & Carly's session was fantastic! As with all things photography, the shoot was based around light... evening sunlight but as the shoot began the clouds rolled in putting a damper on the original plan. Was this something to worry about? not at all. Very rarely do things go to plan in the photography world, so what do you do? roll with the punches and thats exactly how we did this.
Off to the waterfall we went for our first bit of the session. These two are pretty natural when it comes to posing, ask them to stand near one another and the cuddling begins naturally. With a glowing mom to be and an excited father to be this shoot was the bees knees.
We had some pretty nice filtered light from the clouds, great locations to play with and create a personal collection. Once the waterfall was looking amazing with these two we then went back over to the open space near the river to take advantage of the grassy space and the river backdrop. I'm not going to lie.. the water was very sulpherous (is that a word? it is now ) ... but we had to put up with the amazing smell of eggs lol.. it was doable though and these two handled it perfectly!
We then decided to head on over to a last minute locations that Cody had just thought of, the park. It was pretty neat to see this park kind of hidden in a forest.. there was a ball diamond, swimming pool, small splash pad and long walking bridge over the water to get there and some walking trails. Mosquito's were in full force in the woods, of course, and boy did they get a feast out of us... lets just say the wooded are was a quick portion... very quick shots because none of us could stay still for to long. On the way out of the woods we came across a Ginseng field.. you know, those ones with the black mesh tent over the field.. at this point the sun was setting. Colour in the sky and the lines of the field and tent made me stop in my tracks, just knowing there was a shot there.
Over all this shoot was fantastic, couldn't have asked for a better day/evening, it was warm out and Cody & Carly were very easy to work with. Thank you two for being awesome and I can't wait to meet the little one!
-Shutter Click.
Cassidy & Ben | Maternity
Welcome Cassidy ( Mother to be ) & Ben ( Father to be).
You may have seen Cassidy in some of my other collections, as we have worked together on many different occasions. This session was quite a bit different as this is Cassidy's first time being a mother also, I never really shoot maternity sessions, and Ben ( Cassidy's man ) is in this shoot!
What a fantastic day for a shoot, we had nice overcast skies, it was warm out.. a bit windy but that was fine, puts some movement into dress' and hair, conditions were perfect. This shoot took place in London Ontario around the Western University Campus.
With paths through a forest, A river and a wide open field this location offered many different looks, which is what I'm always looking for. I have to give a big thank you to Ben, he was a champ, not only in the pics, but when we were shooting images of Cassidy solo, Ben jumped right in as my assistant holding reflectors and scrims and offering to help carry my gear which was awesome of him!
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