DIY Outdoor Maternity Shoot
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When you live in a 25 million metropole like Seoul, it’s always nice whenever you can escape those big city vibes for a few hours on a weekend. Fortunately, South Korea is a small country and therefore it offers plenty of nice quiet destinations for a one-day trip.
One of our favorite activities lately has been to take plenty of couple pictures together with my growing baby bump. I don’t know if my husband actually enjoys it as much as I do or if he only tags along to make me happy, but I really want to capture these special moments of my pregnancy as much as possible. We already did a lot of indoor photoshoots but since the weather has become quite warm these days we decided on taking our first outdoor pregnancy shoot last weekend.
In this following blog post, I am sharing some tips and insight on how we did our own outdoor maternity photoshoot, and if you like you can also check out the related YouTube video here.
How to take outdoor maternity pictures
GET INSPIRED: The very first thing that I would suggest to do is to go on Pinterest and create a mood board of pictures that you like. While doing so try to stick to one specific theme or concept. Try to only add pictures that are similar in location, light, outfits, and overall mood. If there are two types of reference pictures that you really like but differ a lot in their overall concept, I would suggest you create two separate boards for two different shoot days. Especially outdoor shoots can be very exhausting and if you don’t have a team that helps you with hair, makeup, outfits, and set-up it might get too overwhelming and you won’t have any more fun while shooting.
LOCATION CHECK: When shooting outdoors it is very important to know the locations that you wanna shoot in. After creating your mood board you might want to find a similar location where your reference pictures are shot in. In our example, the location was a wide field with dry vegetation, so the overall mood of the pictures will result in gold/beige color tones. Once you have a location that you know in mind, you should go and visit it one or two days before the shoot day. Especially in spring or autumn earth's inclination changes very rapidly. Sunrise and sunset hours will be very different when you choose to visit the location 2 or 3 weeks in advance. The same goes for the water level if you choose to shoot on a beach. If you do so you can prevent the mistake that happened to us. I knew the location that I wanted to shoot in from a previous shoot that I’d been booked for two years ago. When we were about to arrive, the road that was supposed to lead to the chosen location was closed. The government bought that piece of land and decided to build apartments there. But fortunately, there was still a road in the opposite direction that turned out to have a very similar view.
PROPS THAT YOU NEED:
Camera: Obviously, the most important thing that you will need is a camera. Since I’m no photographer for me it is much easier to shoot with my iPhone. I totally agree that using a professional camera results in better quality pictures, but my experience is that if you don’t have adequate photography knowledge and skills, pictures taken with a DSLR camera might even turn out worse than those taken with the phone.
Photo Timer: If you’re an iPhone user and also own an appleWatch you won’t need a timer. It is the most comfortable way to take self pictures since you’ll be able to see the frame and check the previously taken shots on your watch as well. If you don’t have an appleWatch, there are two other options available too. You can download the application called Photo Timer +, which allows you to take up to 10 photos and choose the time span between each photo. Another option is are Bluetooth remote controls. You can either buy this so-called Wireless Camera Remote Shutter separately or some of the tripods also include them already.
Tripod: When shooting outdoors it is very important to have a very stable tripod since often the floor is uneven or there might be lots of wind (the latter we experienced on our last weekend’s shoot). Also very important for me is that the phone can easily be switched from landscape to portrait mode and that it can reach up to a minimum of 170cm (since my height is 176cm). For all the pictures and videos that I take, I use the Regetek tripod. I absolutely love this tripod because it has a 360 rotation handle, so you can easily turn the phone around and check your pictures without moving from the spot. You can tilt the phone in any direction, it has a load capacity of up to 4kg so you can actually use it also with a DSLR camera and there is a handle to add weight for additional stabilization.
How to get ready and set up the photoshoot
HAIR AND MAKEUP: Organizing and doing a shoot by yourself also means doing your own hair and makeup. For me personally, this part is pretty easy since working as a black model in South Korea, I pretty early understood that it’s best just to learn how to get everything done by myself. Giving tips on how to do your own hair and makeup for a shoot is a large topic that could be written in a separate blog post. Here I’m going to just recommend once again take a look at your reference pictures and see if you can find which hairstyle goes best along with the desired mood. Generally, when shooting outdoors, loose hairstyles look very nice and natural, and with the wind you can easily get some dynamic into the picture as well. As for makeup, fortunately, since pregnancy pictures are usually full body shots there won’t be many closeups on your face so you can keep it simple.
OUTFITS: For an outdoor shoot in nature, dresses and loose clothes are the best options when it comes to pregnancy shoots. Also here the wind can add some nice dynamic to the pictures and dresses are usually very easy to put on, since you probably have to get changed in the car or behind a tree. Also, I would not suggest planning too many outfit changes. First, because it’s sometimes complicated to get changed when you are somewhere out in nature but also because if your location doesn’t offer a lot of variety the pictures can turn out to look all the same. Then it is better if you save the outfits that you wanna have pictures with for other (maternity) photoshoot projects. For our shoot, I chose two linen dresses, a white one from The Mama Set and one soft green dress from The Häll Störe. I made sure that the colors match the location but even more important, I made sure to steam them at home before leaving. As for accessories, I kept it very simple because I want the focus to be on the baby bump rather than some fancy necklace or earrings.
THE SET UP: If you’re shooting outside with natural light there are only a few things that you need to consider. If the sun is shining you want to always have the sun behind the camera. Pregnancy pictures are usually done by standing sideways. In this case, the sun can also be on the side as well. Just be careful with this setup when shooting with your partner or a friend, since there might be a shadow that covers the other person. Also, it’s important to put the tripod at the correct height. The easiest way to check that is to make sure that the head is positioned at 2/3 the height of the picture frame.
Pregnancy picture poses I used
There are very few but simple poses that always look good when taking pregnancy pictures:
Stand sideways to show your beautiful baby bump (sometimes 45 degrees look better than sharp 90 degrees)
Bend one knee to get a curvier profile
In order to obtain a more natural mood, I suggest not looking directly into the camera. You can look at your belly, look backward, slightly beside the camera or close your eyes and pretend to be sunbathing.
Hands can go on the hips, back, on top, or under the belly
