I worked with my friend Gypsy on an outdoor maternity shoot in 2018. The images came out amazing and I use them all over my portfolio and social media pages (see a few examples below). So when Gypsy became pregnant in 2020 I knew I wanted to work with her again.

Promotional material (refrigerator magnet)

I had been working on an idea for a glitter maternity shoot before the pandemic, and I had seen a few examples online that I liked and wanted to try. I read a few blog posts about making your own body glitter (sorry I don’t remember which ones now) so I knew I needed to find good quality glitter and something to help apply it. This was going to be a lot cheaper than buying it premade. It was my wife who came across baby oil gel, which is not only the perfect consistency, but also hypoallergenic and usually enriched with shea and cocoa butter.

Gypsy and I worked together on updating our research and the types of images we wanted to try. This was an obvious choice for doing in the studio as she would probably be mostly nude and I wanted to control the shine on the glitter. I mixed up the glitter and gel in a Tupperware container and we applied it with a brand new kitchen sponge. We quickly realized we needed a lot of glitter.

I used a gray seamless paper backdrop (I almost exclusively use paper in the studio) and put most of the light on Gypsy to give her shape plenty of depth and contrast. I also wanted to make sure that your eyes go to her eyes first, and then the belly, in at least a few shots.

It’s very important to me to get as many different looks with the same model setup as possible, especially with maternity shoots. In these profile shots the viewer’s focus goes right to the glitter and then zooms out to see the whole frame.