Happy New Year everyone!  Ok well this year I don’t have any resolutions other than just enjoying life… and keeping up with blog posts!  Eek!  I just looked over all of my 2011 sessions and I have a gazillion sessions I still need to blog!  I see a few ‘ketchup’ (catch up) blog posts coming up soon so that we can move onto blogging 2012 sessions.

I photographed this beautiful mama to be a couple of months ago – this beach is just so gorgeous – when the tide is low, the rocks are really amazingly beautiful, as is this mama   Baby boy’s first name is Japanese and incorporates ‘ocean’ and ‘to shine’… the beach was the perfect place for our maternity session!

Here are a few of my faves…

I love this family. Seriously. I first met them over a year ago when mama L was waiting on her little dude, Troy to arrive. You can see her beach maternity session HERE.  Shortly after, baby Troy arrived and we did his newborn session, then his 6 month session.  I was so excited when mama L informed me that baby #2 was on her way!  Wohoo!  I am so happy for them.  We headed over to one of my favorite nature spots for their maternity session.  I can’t wait to meet baby girl A in just a couple of months.  Troy is going to be such a great big brother!

I was so excited to finally try out this new location with a maternity client, and was even more thrilled that mama to be agreed to throw her shoes off and dip her toes in the water.  It was such a weird weather day – it actually rained about 20 minutes before our session – ok not for long, but I really had envisioned bright backlit field shots, not overcast gloominess.  I think we did awesome even without the bright cheery skies that I had all planned out in my head.  This mama to be is awaiting the birth of her baby boy, Aiden.  I can’t wait to meet the little dude when he arrives – in just a few weeks!  Thanks so much for a great session, C and J!

I had the pleasure of meeting this beautiful couple a few weeks ago for their mini-maternity session, as part of our Belly to Baby Package.  E and A chose Windansea Beach in La Jolla because it had special meaning to them, and it certainly is a gorgeous beach.  It was quite overcast – like, a lot overcast, but beautiful mama to be E’s pregnancy glow lit up our session and we had a wonderful time.  I can’t wait to meet their little girl in a few weeks when she finally arrives.  Thanks for a great session, A family!

I have been wanting to do a maternity session at this location for the longest time, and had a vision in my head of what I wanted to capture.  Well, I finally had a taker on my ‘awesome’ location and was so excited to see her wear exactly what I had envisioned and suggested.  The images are just what I had pictured in my head, and doesn’t mama look ahhhhh-mazing!!??  Well, we did her session just about a week before her due date and since, she has had her beautiful baby girl, who I will be sharing with you soon, promise   Thank you, N and R for allowing me the opportunity to photograph your beautiful pregnancy!

Ok so the title has nothing to do at all with our session, but rather my processing – just clearing things up now, lol.  So this is my good friend, mommy to the handsome Ethan, seen here.  PS:  He’s already 2.5 months old now!  Anyhow, we did our session just a couple of weeks before Ethan’s birth, but at that time, I got super busy with priority client sessions, so I kept putting her session on hold to edit, until I had a free moment.  I finally got around to editing them at 3am last Friday.  Yes, I was up till 4am because I had wayyyy too much coffee that day.  You know when you keep yawning but are totally not ready to go to bed?  That was me. So there I was, at 3am, sitting at my computer with my 2 year old (who decided to wake up and keep me company in my lap).

Anyhow, it was a super overcast and cloudy day at the beach, but the sun was just about to set and we could see an opening in between the clouds on the horizon, so we were just waiting for the sun to peek through to quickly get that one silhouette shot.  Nobody was prepared for me to shoot – I was just in standby mode, laying belly down in the sand, waiting to yell “run, in position” when the sun would finally peek through.  My camera was exposed for the sky, not for my friends, as I was attempting a silhouette shot.  For you non-photogs, that means that my friends were dialed into my camera to be completely underexposed and basically black, while the camera was set to expose properly for the sky, keeping it’s color intact.  Brooke and daddy went to put their toes in the water when Brooke suddenly jumped – I snapped quickly… it was a total spur of the moment shot.  Anyhow, back to editing… I did my usual editing as a silhouette shot, since that’s what it was set up to be, and the shot looked fine, but just as I was finishing up and ready to save it, I accidentally moved my mouse too far in levels and this image appeared.  I instantly loved it.  It’s completely underexposed, and not at all a well thought out image, but the moment, the feeling and even the underexposed subjects are imperfectly perfect for me, and is possibly one of my favorite images…

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting beautiful mama-to-be S.  We headed to Pacific Beach to capture her beautiful belly before her little one arrives in just a couple of weeks!  I hope you are enjoying your last two weeks of pregnancy – can’t wait to meet your little one soon!  Thanks for a great evening!

Here are a few from our beach maternity session: