Underwater Maternity Photos

July 15, 2017 mariapelletier

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve really taken advantage of capturing this pregnancy with photography. From getting professional photos taken in Maui to creative photography in Los Angeles I have no shortage of documenting my pregnancy with this baby. I think partially because I know how much of a gift this pregnancy is and partially because it’s the one time for a woman when you don’t need to feel self conscious about your body.

The one type of maternity photography I knew I wanted, even before we got pregnant, was underwater photography. For my first pregnancy, I would only have been around 3-5mo pregnant during the summer and I was disappointed I wouldn’t be able to do these type of photos. So when we got pregnant a second time with this baby and I realized I’d be in my third trimester in the summer I was so excited and personally thanked Jesus for aligning this pregnancy up with my photography dreams. I’m not sure if he actually cared about that but anyway, praise his timing! lol.

On a high from the great Maui maternity photos, I came back to LA excited to find and book an underwater maternity photographer. I started going down my short list, making calls and was quickly disheartened when I received quotes back at $1,000 or more. I was so bummed and telling my friend & coworker (@morganbishopp, she also takes the majority of the photos for me on this blog and helped me set this blog up. Go check her out, she’s super talented!) that I didn’t think I would be able to get them. Her immediate response was “Why don’t we use my camera and rent underwater housing and take them ourselves, how hard can it be?” I love her can-do, go for it personality. She’s self taught in photography and HTML and isn’t intimidated to look something up online and figure it out for herself. So we found an equipment rental company, started doing “inspiration research” (searched #underwatermaternityphotography on instagram), came up with our “shot list”, pulled wardrobe and went to JoAnn Fabrics for some “flowy chiffon” and were ready for our very own professional photo shoot.

On the day of, Morgan got a super quick lesson on how to use the underwater housing when she picked it up and we hopped into my pool to get to work. Immediately upon putting her camera into the housing we realized something was up with the trigger and the photos we’re taking. No problem, a little googling, reading the housing manual and some gaf tape and rigging from my husband and we were in business! Then we realized we were all too buoyant to stay under water. A few dumbbells later and we had that MacGyver-ed as well. Followed by a third person as a standby lifeguard with a pool noodle ready and some rehearsals of poses underwater and setting up our angles to maximize the shots we got and we had a well thought out professional shoot on our hands. Moral of the story, nothing stands in the way of two smart girls and their Instagram dreams.

Here are my favorite photos from our session. Thank you, Morgan for this amazing series and thanks for always being a reminder that nothing is impossible you just have to be willing to put in the work to figure it out.