When the moon rises over the starlight freedom of her mind… Is this the darkest maternity session you have ever seen?
[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”Ponyphonic, The Moon Rises” link=”” color=”#8C76AF” class=”” size=”16″] And all will know the wonderOf my dark and jeweled sky
When all the world is wrapped
In an eternal lullaby
[/perfectpullquote]
NAH! I’M JUST MESSING WITH YOU ALL… (Although, makes me think about the concept for a future dark maternity session… Anyone interested?) Forgive me for tricking you in with all these poetry and epic dark visuals, especially that video on Snapchat*. This maternity session should instead be classified as a classically gentle story of a beautiful expecting mom. The cover image, though, stood out in my mind and begged for that Zorz Studios signature fine art craftsmanship, pulling the adequate title and catchphrase along with it. I realize it looks out of context but who would resist? The cover image took hours to post-process and then enhance via digital painting: the original looked no different from the other images in terms of lighting and softness. I could in theory transform all photos to make the story fully revolve around the dark side but unfortunately, such time commitments are infeasible for a busy season, plus not quite what the client requested of me…
A note regarding the naming and wording this blog’s intro. My devoted readers know that it is a special and nourished part of my style and story delivery. I played with words a bit here, to whatever success. I love doing it but I suspect it is rough on occasion. Let me excuse myself: English isn’t my native language and I haven’t spoken it for half of my life. A word play demands skills and thorough knowledge whereas I still learn some common words. With this little crying preface, here’s what moved me: in “duplicity” I see my deceit in tricking you about the rest of the visual story, as well as a little cute duplicate hiding in the belly; in “far fetched” I exaggerated the implausible nature of some dark maternity session, as well as the fact that I drove some eight hours with my daughter that day to get these shots (more on her participation later).
So what do we finally have here? Another industry referral from one of the loyal legends of Zorz Studios, Shannon (right) who walked the mile with me through boudoir, trash-the-dress, maternity, and a newborn session. Her photo sessions made a little buzz among her beauty industry peers and I worked with a few of them (boudoir to maternity). Today’s story beautiful lady is her coworker from nuBest Salon, Jessica. She invited me to her country house in the Catskills with acres of flowers and gardens, hence the prevailing soft theme of this charming maternity session.
Click images for full size. Kindly refrain from re-uploading images to social media during the first week of feature. Share instead! 🙂
* I use Snapchat to give the sneakiest of peeks on the projects I’m working on, either way before any other social media previews, or outright exclusively, like the recent revelation of my vinyl-wrapped Dare to be Photographedâ„¢ re-branded car which was never posted elsewhere. If such things feed your curiosity, username is “ZorzStudios”. Here’s how things got deceitful on Snapchat this time, though:
There is a very special detail about this maternity session: I brought my teen daughter to assist me for the first time. She’s recently modeled for me a little and been exposed to my work in the post-production stage watching me on occasion but I never really pushed photography to her, letting her express her interest if time comes. It doesn’t look like she may turn into one of those photographers “fascinated from age 4 watching my father and trying my hand at it at 8” but I want her to at least learn some secondary skill (e.g. learning about and carrying the equipment, using the off-camera light, handling the props). I invited her and we had good time there, also making the long trip much more enjoyable and informative for both of us talking all things life. By the way, she gave a very thrilled approval of the cover image. She’s into such themes now and I could sense the pride in her voice. Here are some behind-the-scenes:
