My friend Rachel Murray Photography tore her ACL right before a maternity session she had booked. She couldn’t get out to the location, so she asked me to step in and shoot it for her.
I said yes before she even finished asking. I know in my heart that she would do the exact same for me if roles were reversed. It was a very easy yes.
The couple was expecting their first baby, a girl. We met out at the sand dunes right at sunset. She wore white lace and linen, soft and simple against all that sand.
There’s something about film that slows everything down. You only get so many frames, so you wait for the real moment instead of chasing a hundred almost right ones. The light was going gold by then, low and warm, catching the edge of her hair and the curve of her belly. He kept watching her instead of the camera. She kept resting her hands on her belly without thinking about it, his hand right there next to hers.
At one point they just stood at the top of the dune, small against all that open space, holding hands. That’s the kind of moment film was made for.
Those are the frames that ended up on this roll.
I’m not sharing the digital images here. This post is just the film. The quieter version of the same evening.
A roll of film comes with me to every full session I shoot. I love having both, the digital images that capture everything, and the film frames that slow down just enough to capture what it felt like. I learned photography on film years ago, so it brings me back to why I fell in love with it in the first place.
If you’re expecting and you want photos that feel like this, soft, real, a little quiet, that’s exactly the kind of session I love shooting as a film maternity photographer in Las Vegas. Whether it’s film or digital, the goal is always the same. Photos that hold onto how this chapter actually felt, not just how it looked.
If you’re local to Las Vegas and thinking about a maternity session, I’d love to talk with you about it.
