Creative Maternity Self-portraits Using Flour

There are a lot of trends and traditional portraits for maternity photography, but I wanted to try something a little messier, and little bit different from the norm. I love all maternity photography though. I am one of those people that think pregnant women are absolutely beautiful.

Although I don't quite feel that way myself a lot through this rollercoaster of a pregnancy, but the ability to create and nourish life, to create another human being, is truly fascinating and a miracle. I do get a bit sappy about it, so I will stop there, and continue on with more about this particular photo session.

I have always loved the stunning images of ballet dancers covered in flour. If you don't know what I am referring to, it's something to be seen, just do a Google search. I guarantee you will be in awe. I have been wanting to do something with flour for a really long time, but I haven't been in touch with many dancers, and since I am not a ballerina, well, the idea has just been sitting on the back burner for a while.

Over the last few months as I watch my belly grow I have pondered about many different ideas and themes to play with for my maternity photos. I have been very excited to start snapping away. With my first child, I have two Polaroid shots taken about month before I gave birth.

Maternity photography wasn't something I knew a lot about 12 years ago, or really saw much of, or knew of other moms doing it. It just wasn't really on my radar, and I honestly was not comfortable in front of a camera, like so many women, I easily had a list of reasons why I loathed how I looked and shouldn't be photographed.

Now, all these years later I have since learned to value, love, and appreciate myself better, and over the years have made it part of my journey to also encourage other women to love themselves, to exist in photos, and to express who they are. I started that journey through becoming a holistic health coach, and professional portrait photographer. Before really getting out there to offer my photography services to other women, I realized that I must find a way to get in front of the camera too. How can I coach other women to pose and feel comfortable getting their portraits taken, if I don't do it myself? I would be a phony, a hypocrite, so a few years back I started taking self-portraits.

It's still a vulnerable thing to do, to take self-portraits, to share my creativity, and put it out online for anyone to see and comment about, but I have found photography to be not only a wonderful outlet for learning and creativity, but for healing too.

Taking these self-portrait maternity photos using flour was really challenging. I needed help for obvious and not so apparent reasons. I couldn't very well take the photo and throw flour on myself. So I asked a friend to come over and help my husband to throw flour on me. The evening of the planned shoot I had everything set up. My lights, my settings, and had explained to my husband that all he would need to do is push the shutter button, and the timer would allow him enough time to throw flour on me while I posed.

Typically when I shoot my self-portraits, I don't really need any assistance, but this was a bit more of a task to take on. I have been struggling throughout my pregnancy. I have been dealing with every symptom in the book and then some. Over the last couple months I have had a very difficult time just walking, sitting, or lying down. I have been in a lot of pain, have had some torn abdominal muscles from a bad respiratory infection, plantar fascitis, and pubis symphisis. So running back and forth from my camera and posing wasn't going to be easy, as it would be hard enough to just stand there and have flour thrown at me.

Sure enough, about ten minutes before my friend was scheduled to come over, all of my set-up was ready, my body decided this was not the right time. It cramped all over, repeatedly, until I was tears, and couldn't move. I called off the shoot, and felt very disappointed. The following morning, I wasn't feeling a heck of lot better, but I wanted to try for it again. This time though, it would just be my husband and I attempting, and I didn't feel up for the flour being tossed at me.

My set-up was still ready, so I turned on all the lights and camera, explained to my husband that he would just need to push the shutter button, and I would do the rest in Photoshop. I got through three poses before cramping and pain set in pretty badly again. I was happy with the three shots though, and decided it was enough.

After a break, I went to my desk and started taking photos of flour that I already have, along with some powder brushes and painting in the flour effects I was hoping to get live, in person, on the shoot. I was a bit bummed about not taking on the whole, "real" flour session, but the creativity is still there, and I feel good about pulling off the overall idea, and giving it my best shot.

So although I call these self-portraits, I really couldn't have done it entirely without the love and support of my husband. He was there to rub my feet when they cramped, help me sit when I needed to, and push the shutter for me so I wouldn't have to go back and forth constantly to my camera/tripod.

With all this said, we still had 24 pounds of flour sitting in our pantry. I joked and said I could make a lot of banana bread and chocolate cake with that, but it would be lot more fun to try for another flour shoot. My husband looked at me like I was crazy, and I explained this time it wouldn't be me in the photos, but our son. I thought it would be really cool to get some shots of him in martial art poses and doing kicks, since he is a black belt in taekwondo. So last night, my friend, my son's TKD instructor came over, and her and my husband threw flour all over my son in the backyard. I sat in a chair with my comfy sneakers on, positioned just where I needed to be to get the shots. We had fun, and made a mess. Those photos aren't edited yet, but will be soon.

If anything can be said symbolically comparing a flour shoot to pregnancy or life in general is that things can get messy, and sometimes you just can't plan where everything is going to end up, or how everything will go, but in the end, with a positive attitude, and not giving up, it will work out and clean up in the wash.

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