My First Maternity Shoot

I had the privilege of doing my first maternity shoot yesterday. It was a low-key affair and a little too rushed for my liking due to time constraints, but ultimately a lot of fun and my first actual organised photo shoot (as opposed to my normal, relatively unplanned photo-wanderings).

I shot two rolls of film - Kodak Porta 800 (colour) in my EOS 3 and Fuji Neopan 400 (black and white) in my EOS 5 (yes, there's a story there too, but for another time...) as well as a bunch of digital shots on my 350D. The 350D was notionally for test shots, but the difference in zoom factor due to the digital's crop-frame sensor is starting to annoy me to the point where I want a full-frame digital. Plus the 350D, while still capable of great images in the right conditions, is starting to become a limitation.

We shot indoors by a balcony door and had plenty of natural light to work with, as is my preference. Joy of joys, I had a make-up artist (female) to work with who doubled as a second shooter and also helped me pose the model, not to mention getting some great shots that I couldn't (eg. me with said model) I also had a 1000W "cine" light which I used a little bit, mostly to experiment with a different "look" but turned it off after the rated four minutes and forgot to turn it on again. I also completely neglected to use a flash, but again, this is the look I generally prefer and since it was my photo shoot, I could get away with that.

I did manage some good shots with the 350D anyway, but I'm really looking forward to getting the film back from processing...

What did I learn so far? Having a switched-on assistant is really, really helpful. I got away with not having much of a plan because she had plenty of ideas, plus the model was very tolerant of our experiments. But it's a wake-up call to me that I need to become much more organised if I'm going to do this for real. Scary, but fun!