When is the best time to have maternity portraits?

I usually recommend having your maternity portraits taken between 28 and 34 weeks.

By then your bump is beautifully established, but you’re hopefully still comfortable enough to enjoy the experience rather than wondering why on earth I keep asking you to stand up again!

It also leaves us enough time for you to come back for your Cinematic Design Consultation and choose your portraits before those final few weeks when everything can suddenly feel rather busy.

Is 35 weeks too late for maternity portraits?

Not necessarily. Babies and pregnancies don’t work neatly to a diary, and 34 weeks isn’t a cut-off point. If you’re further along and have only just decided you’d love maternity portraits, please don’t assume you’ve missed your chance.

Get in touch and we can have a chat about where you are in your pregnancy and whether we can make the timing work for you.

Make a day of it

Your maternity photography experience doesn’t have to be the only thing you do that day.

You might decide to go for lunch afterwards, take a little wander somewhere you love or simply enjoy having some time together before life changes again.

If you’re bringing your children with you, you could make them part of the plans too. This is their story as well; they’re waiting to meet this little person just as you are.

It doesn’t need to be anything elaborate. Sometimes it’s simply rather lovely to mark the day and remember this very particular moment in your family’s life.

Do I need professional hair and make-up for maternity portraits?

No. In fact, I deliberately don’t include professional hair and make-up as part of the Maternity Experience.

Wear your hair the way you love it and do your make-up as you normally would when you want to feel your best. I want you to look at these portraits years from now and recognise yourself, not a version of you that existed for one afternoon because you were having your photograph taken.

If you’re planning a haircut or colour, I’d avoid doing it immediately beforehand. Give yourself a little time to get used to it and work out how you like to wear it.

Most importantly, don’t feel you need to transform yourself for the camera. I want you to look back and think:

“Good grief, I looked amazing.”

And know that you really did.

What happens after my maternity photography experience?

Before your baby arrives, you’ll come back to the studio for your Cinematic Design Consultation.

This is when you’ll see your finished maternity portraits for the first time and decide which ones you’d love to keep, whether that’s individual portraits, a collection or artwork for your home.

There’s no minimum spend and no decision to make before you’ve seen what we’ve created together.

I deliberately arrange your Design Consultation before your due date wherever possible. Your maternity portraits belong to this chapter of your story; they don’t need to wait for whatever comes next.

When should I book my maternity photography experience?

You don’t need to wait until you’re approaching the 28–34 week stage to get in touch. In fact, booking earlier gives us plenty of time to plan your experience around you and the people you’d like to include.

Once your date is in the diary, we’ll have a Discovery Call to talk about what you’d love these portraits to remember, what you might like to wear and any ideas you already have.

If you’re already further along in your pregnancy, don’t assume you’ve left it too late. Get in touch and I’ll always see what we can do.

How do I choose a maternity photographer?

Start by looking beyond the individual photographs and think about whether you connect with the photographer’s overall style and approach.

Maternity photography can look very different from one photographer to another. Some experiences are highly styled and glamorous; others are much more natural and centred around you and the people you love. Neither is right or wrong, but you should be able to recognise something of yourself in the work you’re looking at.

Look at their experience, professional qualifications and the consistency of their work too, but also find out what actually happens before, during and after you’re photographed. How will they get to know you? Will you be guided? Can the people important to you be included? What will you be able to choose afterwards, and are the prices clear before you book?

Most importantly, choose someone you feel comfortable talking to. You’re trusting them with a very particular moment in your life, and you should feel that they’re interested in your story, rather than simply recreating the same maternity portraits with a different person standing in them.

Celebrate your bump

Pregnancy can feel as though it lasts forever while you’re in it, and then suddenly this particular version of your family is gone.

Your maternity portraits aren’t only about how your bump looked. They’re about remembering the person you were carrying, the little movements and habits you’d already begun to recognise, and the people who were waiting to meet them.

So yes, celebrate your bump, but more than that, celebrate the relationship that’s already begun.

The relationship doesn’t begin at birth, so why should the story we photograph begin there?

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