Another African-American underwater maternity shoot but I tried something like never before, and think the result is striking.
UPDATE: Studio website went down within an hour of publishing and promoting this blog. My apologies to those who followed the link to only see a server error message. It took 16 hours to have the webhost fix it.
So I’ve just published an African-American underwater maternity session for a former Miss Universe Jamaica 2015 runner-up… Here’s another young lady. As I explain in my recent blogs, maternity clients were prominent this pandemic summer of 2020. No, this is not the Coronavirus wave, as most of these babies were conceived prior to the outbreak. Expecting moms are simply among those who cannot postpone their sessions so there appears to be a “wave”.
I still have several maternity blogs lined up and another booked African-American underwater maternity to shoot later this month, potentially two. The underwater photography season is ending. With most private outdoor pools closing soon, the very “boomers” fall right on winter. They will regretfully miss this unique artistic spin on maternity photoshoots. According to recent researches, however, half a million babies less are expected in the US alone. Those who are holding up can catch the next season!
Lennear Baldwin-Evans found me via Google search and reached out in July. She is a power lady. An entrepreneur, speaker, co-founder of MogulMIND, success coach, CBD consultant, and real estate investor, she is after impact and making a difference. Underwater maternity is the ticket, as well as body art that I offer throughout the year, by the way.
We used a pool in Westchester. Many family members joined us on their beach chairs around the pool, watching us work for half a day. 🙂
Lennear was among those for whom submerging under water, in the right photographic way, was a challenge. Initially I even had to ask for her husband’s help. With my breathing and body control instructions we soon completed the training. She was ready for the challenge of breathing out instead of in!
Artistic Take
As I started to retouch her photos, I decided to try a unique style, something that I haven’t done yet. I’ve been wanting to create a black-and-white underwater series for some time now and thought of doing it now. Then something prompted me to add a selective color of teal/blue to accentuate the uniqueness of this African-American underwater maternity. Notice that I avoided the exact body separation form the background. It would look too boring so I went with a more painting-like approach, envisioning splashes of color around her body.
Of note, when I look for that “color recipe”, I feel like an alchemist surrounded by bubbling retorts. It takes time to develop the perfect combination of color selection, hue and saturation adjustments, masks, brushes, filters, channel manipulation, layers, and transparency. Once the recipes is created, the rest of the images flow quicker but I spent hours on the first one…
I don’t get this feeling often and forgive my immodesty… I dare to think that one of these photos would feel comfortable in an art gallery or someone’s wall, even if unrelated to our beautiful successful lady, who is as exquisite and rare as a black pearl. That photo is the last one below. What do you think? Hope you will enjoy these like I do!
Click images for full size. Kindly refrain from re-uploading images to social media during the first week of feature. Share instead and give credit to @ZorzStudios!
Whaaaaat? 🙂
Imagine my amazement when today, as I was looking at Lennear’s Instagram for a few details for this blog, I see the color scheme of her baby shower from a week ago… Black and teal/blue!! I guess I hit home with my artistic touch there, then.
