before + after. An in-home maternity and newborn story session with Geelong photographer, Michelle McKay.
The perfect little prize they'd been waiting for. <3
At some point on your journey toward motherhood you no doubt started noticing maternity photographs being shared on the interwebs.
You know the ones - mama stands gorgeously in a field or on a beach, probably at sunset, probably with flowers nearby, probably with a stunning flowing dress that showed off her glorious bump.
The wind was probably softly blowing and she probably looked completely blissed out, as she gently embraced her beautiful growing tummy.
You saw those photographs.
You thought they were wonderful. (Let’s face it, if they were the same ones I've seen, they absolutely were!)
But you also knew they weren’t for you.
When it came to making a record of your pregnancy, you found yourself hoping for something a little more understated, a little more relaxed, a little more authentic.
Something that went a little closer to catching a little of what life is like for you right now, in these quiet days and weeks of anticipation before your already adored darling arrives, and shakes everything up.
You may not quite know exactly what you’re exactly envisioning.
You just know you’d like something that’s a little more... you.
I'm so happy to make photographs that tell a little something of now - of a time and a place in your life which is already slipping, already moving gently into past tense, to be replaced by something just as wonderful yet so entirely and unequivocally different.
Because while it may be tricky to imagine in this moment, years from now these photographs of before will be such a precious keepsake of a time long gone and wistfully different.
They’ll be ones you'll look back on with a faint and melancholy smile, as you revisit a time long ago when it was maybe just the two of you -
a hopeful not-yet-mama and her sweetheart, dreaming forward into the after, of a family you'll no longer be able to imagine your life without.
Maternity photographs are important, and for this reason I am currently happily gifting a maternity story session to expectant parents in Geelong, when they secure their in-home newborn session.
It’s just one small thing I can do to encourage us all to appreciate the wonder of our beautiful ordinary lives, just as they are.
Right now.
Enjoy these few photographs from a recent maternity and in-home story series, and if you know of an expectant mama make sure you share the love! x
We captured these shots at around 36 weeks. Look at them - so blissed out in anticipation.
This series was made in the week following babe's arrival.
Get in touch to enquire about availabilities for the final months of 2018 and into the new year. x