Dawn of Life: Sunrise Maternity Shoot

Here are the perks of getting up at 4 AM and gracing a sunrise maternity shoot!

[perfectpullquote align=”left” cite=”Vladimir Nabokov” link=”” color=”#8C76AF” class=”” size=”16″]Life is a great sunrise…[/perfectpullquote]

Pregnancy gives a woman’s concept and definition of beauty a whole new meaning. Although it is a time of joy, it can also be extremely challenging. The realization that you are carrying and will soon give birth to a new life is beyond the reach of any flowery adjective.

Let’s rewind a little. In 2016, an Indian couple was referred to me for an engagement photo shoot by a good client of mine. As a chef, Krishna took food very seriously while Rupal was a rookie in the kitchen. The stark contrast between the two conjured up the novel idea of a food fight leading up to a gourmet dinner–of course, with all the trimmings.

Some time later, they are expecting their first-born and it is the professional duty of yours truly to make it memorable. There are only a few months in your life when you are blessed with the joy of pregnancy.  Talking to her child in the belly, listening to soothing music with her, making cute jokes of the baby’s kicking, dreaming of her future, building a room for her… A woman might talk about the pain, but years later when she sees her child grow, she looks back at those nine months with immense fondness, calling it the hardest yet most beautiful thing she’s ever done. 

Now fast forward to the day preceding this sunrise maternity shoot. Such are the vagaries of photography business that often you have to accommodate last minute jobs before a complete day of outdoor shooting. As it happened, I had spent the previous day wrapping up a belated out-of-city event resulting in only three hours of sleep before the photo shoot. However, when the alarm went off, it was time to rise and shine. The early bird gets the worm, as another poetic morning maternity shoot proved.

Natural sunlight, as anyone remotely associated with photography can testify, is the soul of a memorable picture. Therefore, to embrace the sun at its freshest and best, we started at 5:40 AMat the Colonial Park in Somerset, New Jersey. We chose the 685-acre park due to its scenic beauty and the borders it shares with the Raritan Canal, the historic Delaware and the Millstone River. Also, it is one of the leading attractions in Somerset, NJ.

The passion Rupal and Krishna had for each other reflected well in the first light by the river. After that, we hit the field and made good use of the rich background to showcase the couple’s joy and happiness. Mysterious early morning mist rising from the river, dew drops hanging from the spider web catching the sunrise, mother’s reflection in the pool surrounded by lilies–all these unexpected elements of the sunrise maternity shoot accentuated the gentleness of their miracle in the making. We saved the last few shots for the Rose Garden, which is a paradise with almost every type of rose imaginable on earth.

This sunrise maternity shoot was extremely memorable as Rupal and Krishna’s love for each other could be felt in the air, and as the legendary Robert Capa has said, “If your pictures are not good enough you are not close enough.”

P.S. Coincidentally, the cover of this blog is reminiscent of a beauty photoshoot for another Indian client shot in India but in sunset.

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