Thinking about birth photography? How and why to hire a birth photographer...
As we approach the coming anniversary of my older daughter’s Birth Day, I’ve been thinking again about the value and importance of birth photography.
Every year on my birthday, my mother tells me the same story again - how she labored at home, how my grandmother brought her a rose with a bud and the bud was the baby girl she was about to have (and this prediction in the days before ultrasounds and gender testing). I’ve started telling my daughter about her birth story, too - parts of which I remember with a vivid clarity and parts of which I remember only through a fuzzy veil.
Which brings me to reason #1: Evolution demands that we forget broad swathes of labor and so you won’t remember everything about this most significant and momentous process. The power of a photograph is that photos shape our memories of an event and experience when memory fades, and my role as a photographer is to curate your images to hold your memories.
I had two different labor experiences with my two children, but what I do remember is the stunning awe of the baby at last - and what I love to photograph is the look on your face when you do it, when you get to the other side and meet your baby. Whether waking from the primal dream state or separated from your body by a surgical curtain, the baby at last is exquisite relief.
Yes, birth photography is about the actual moment of birth - the most astonishing mammal moment of crowning or extraction - but it is also so much more than that. My role as the birth photographer is to capture the whole story around your experience, from cord cutting to first latch to the calm still joy of a skin-to-skin gaze.
Labor is perhaps the first parenting experience where it is beyond your control. But another thing I love about birth photography and one of the things that I think is so valuable about having these photos afterwards is to see you are so strong, so capable. Also, to see the support of the people around you while you do this work (and, with a professional there to take care of the photos, your partner/family can focus on what matters most: supporting you as you bring a new person to join the world).
To choose a birth photographer is to put your trust in a professional with an eye for the moment, able to anticipate the unanticipated. Birth photography is my true passion and I would love to help you document your experience. Click through to see more or contact me now to learn more.