MATERNITY FAQ

We recommend booking your Maternity Session into our calendar in your second trimester as we can fill up quite fast depending on the time of year. We love photographing expecting Mothers when they are between 28-36 weeks pregnant.

Everyone is different and every body is different so we work with Moms on an individual basis to determine the best time to book. Many factors can come into play including if you have been scheduled to have an early C-Section for health complications or you are having twins and are expected to deliver early. Or maybe you’re just more comfortable aiming for an earlier date to have your photoshoot take place. We’ll work with your comfort level.

We believe strongly in giving our clients the time they need to feel comfortable with us. If we rush through a session to meet a 30 minute time frame we feel that we don’t do our best work. Generally our sessions are around 45 minutes - 2 hours long. We love hearing how your pregnancy is going, sharing our own pregnancy memories along the way. When we connect together, your connection with the camera and your comfort level with the session comes together perfectly to create gorgeous portraits with genuine expressions.

We do have set hours on when we are available for your Maternity Photography Session for various reasons including finding the most flattering light for you and the landscape you have chosen in the Kingston area, as well as staying within our own business hours that meets our family's needs for both studio and outdoor portraits.

Maternity Studio Photoshoots begin at 10am (11am if getting makeup done) Monday-Friday (or on weekends at 10am if you’ve paid the additional weekend rate of $200).

Outdoor Maternity Photoshoots begin at 1.5-2 hours before sunset Monday-Thursday or on weekends if you’ve paid the additional weekend rate (add $200). Outdoor Sessions take place between May 20th-November 10th, weather permitting (we don’t shoot in weather that is colder than -8C or if there is a heat advisory). Trusting us to find the best and most flattering light is part of hiring us and we want to create the very best portraits possible of you that you are just going to love!

Absolutely. Your partner and other children are more than welcome to come, you'll find which packages include your partner and children here, but the focus will be 100% on your pregnancy. With Partners we love showing the connection between two people in love and the growing love for their unborn baby. It’s a truly magical time in your lives and it’s just as much of a big deal for your partner as it is for you.

We will create portraits of you both together and by yourself in various locations outdoors, at the location we choose ahead of time or in the studio. We’ll be honest though, we love creating gorgeous wide angle landscape portraits with couples outside embracing nature or getting really creative with Fine Art Maternity Portraits in the studio.

Fashion-Inspired Maternity Photography is what we are passionate about with editorial looks and sweet moments. We love both types of photography equally!

With children, if we are photographing your session outdoors with your partner and children we will walk around together to the various locations within the park for example, creating portraits of you all together and then have your partner watch your other children while we get a few of you alone in that area. We try to keep the session as relaxed and carefree as possible while keeping in mind that children only last so long before they want to break free and run away. And that’s perfectly awesome of them, we love kids! So we do try to be quick during their portrait parts so they can take lots of breaks for snacks, energy burning jumps and snuggles. We will for sure get great portraits of you with your children, after all they are probably just as excited as you are (maybe more!

We do recommend Maternity Photography Sessions take place outside when you have little children so we don’t have to contain that energy as much but Mama’s get pregnant all year long so if it’s freezing outside and you want to include your other children then we’ll be in the studio and try to get the children part done as soon as possible so they can be free to leave the studio with your Partner or to be picked up by a caregiver. Portrait sessions that involve young children do tend to be more of a family focused session then a focus on Mama session. So if you are hoping for special editorial portraits in the studio just using fabrics, we do encourage those sessions to be of just Mom and partner.

This session is really about your strength and empowerment. You decide Mama if you want to just have a special day for just you or include your other children in more of a family-oriented maternity session.

We are so lucky that we can have access to both forest, urban and lakeside locations in the Kingston Ontario area for your Maternity session. I have a few locations that I just love to go to but I’m definitely open to finding new hidden gems if you have a great location in mind!

We’ll work with you closely to pick a spot that gets the exact feel you would like in your portraits as it should reflect what you love to do. If you love being in the great outdoors we might choose a local park. If your idea of a perfect day is strolling around the downtown core of Kingston then we’ll meet up in Market Square and use the interesting architectural details nearby to create intimate portraits with an urban flair. If sitting on a beach is your idea of perfection then we’ll head out to one of the local parks to be lakeside. There are lots of different locations in and around the city and we love working on finding the best location for you. The time of year is also a big factor in deciding your location as well. Once you book your session we’ll go over the options in more detail.

Feel free to go through our Outdoor Maternity Portfolio to see if a location jumps out to you as being perfect. You’ll notice that we love sweeping landscape portraits as well as close up portraits that show the landscape in the background.

Great question! We do have maternity dresses from designers all over the world, skirts, and accessories that you can use in your session. We also like to get creative and create dresses out of different fabric and flowing materials.

We encourage you to look through our available dresses here which we add to often! You are welcome to schedule in a time to come to the studio to see what we have to offer to see if it compliments the look you wanted to achieve and fits as every body shape is different though our dresses come with a lot of stretch so the sizing we share is reflective of for example a Medium being a small medium and a large medium. We have dresses and bodysuits from size Small to 3x.

If one of our designer dresses doesn't catch your eye, we recommend looking at the following websites: Pink Blush Maternity, Sew Trendy Accessories, Mii Estilo or Miss Madison's Photo Props. You could also look into renting a gown from Sugar Bump Gown Rentals.

To see our Pinterest Board with hundreds of Maternity Outfit Ideas go here.

There are so many different options from casual to glamourous! If you look at our portfolio you’ll see that we cater to both types of clients.

Need help? Once you’re all booked in, we can go over all this with you. We definitely don’t want you to feel overwhelmed with too many options!

We know that many of our clients are not looking for a lot of Maternity Portraits, more that they are looking for a limited amount of beautiful imagery to remember this time in their lives. We work on creating unique portraits with great connection with our clients and believe quality over quantity is paramount.

Please go to our Maternity Package page here to see the package options and what they include and let us know if you have any questions at all!

Yes that’s the goal! To make you look and feel your very best! To show the beauty of pregnancy and the strength and empowerment that comes with creating life.

I love creating both editorial and casual looks and love when clients let me have creative control over the session in posing and love love when clients trust me to make them look fabulous!

If you trust me to do what I do best, using my 11+years of experience in posing women of all shapes and sizes, I promise you will love your portraits. Pregnancy is all about love and capturing the Joys of Motherhood!

Want to look extra fabulous? We can help you get in touch with a hair and makeup team that will make you look and feel fantastic. This is your dream Maternity Photoshoot – it’s okay to go all out and put yourself first, just this once!

Great question! I don’t work with any assistants, so only a female will be present for your session in the studio. Our studio is located in our home separate from my family, so there is a possibility that my husband will be on the premises with our kids depending on the session day of the week as he sometimes works from home (if you paid the additional weekend fee for example or if it’s when school is out for Summer).

My family does not come into the studio area to keep it as clean as possible and when clients are there and if you still prefer no adult males in the home during your session we can make that happen too. Don’t worry Mama, your comfort is my number one priority during our time together.

In most instances yes but there are a few items that are not welcome in our home studio and this includes guns and knives (no exceptions to this rule even if you use guns or knives in your profession). This can also include a horse in my studio for example :) It’s best to check in with me to see if it’s okay. And if it’s definitely on our No-Go list then we can help you find a photographer that does not mind those items that you can work with.

Yes! We love when clients incorporate items such as Sari’s, Rosaries, Hijabs, jewelry, etc. We’d love to see the item in a photograph ahead of time so we can dream up a great pose to show off your item before you arrive.

Many Moms have unfortunately experienced loss before coming into my studio or have struggled to get to this point through years of procedures and needles. I think honouring your journey in your portraits is a thoughtful way of remembering all that it took to get to this point for your family. We can incorporate ultrasound pictures, picture frames of loved ones, butterflies, rainbows, etc. Please speak with me about what you are looking for so we can come up with something that feels right to you.

We can definitely have your surrogate join us for portraits or if they don’t live in town we could create a couple session that incorporates important items to you like an ultrasound picture or special teddy bear, etc. Chat with me about how we can celebrate your journey!

It certainly is! We have many clients that are in law enforcement, waiting for adoptions to finalize, etc or just do not have any online presence at all that would like to stay off the internet. Your contract states that we are allowed to use your images in our portfolio online and in person and for advertising our services or if we want to enter a specific maternity or newborn photography competition. While we appreciate our clients letting us use their images for these purposes, sometimes that’s just not possible. We make a note on your file and we won’t use your images if you let us know that it’s not possible.

We do love to show diversity in our portfolio in all forms from different skin tones, cultures, body shapes, abilities, and types of love. The reason we love to show this is we want every perspective client to understand that they are worthy of cherished family portraits and deserve to be in our portfolio. Representation matters to children and we want to show a wide variety of people so that kids know they are worthy too no matter who they are.

Are we missing different looks in our portfolio? We sure are. We hope overtime you’ll come to see every colour, every body shape, every ability and every form of love in each type of photography we do but for now we’ll just keep striving to be as open and inclusive as possible. In this studio we celebrate diversity in all it’s forms! We want our portfolio to represent the whole world and all the beautiful people in it! We appreciate when our clients let us use their portraits in our portfolio so we can show all different types of beautiful pregnant Mothers but sometimes because of a Mother’s job or cultural beliefs we are not able to share those images on here. We’ll keep trying to show you as much as we are able to but just know we are open to all that come in and that the women you see in our portfolio are just regular Mom’s like you. Not models!

While we don’t offer hair and makeup artistry on site we do have a list of trusted professionals in the Kingston and Napanee area that we recommend contacting. Some clients love the extra pampering on their special day.

If you decide that you’d like to do your own hair and makeup we recommend doing it like you would for a fancy restaurant or a wedding. We recommend matte finish makeup without shimmer/glitter as the strobe lights brighten those parts quite a lot. If you don’t wear makeup that is totally fine! There is no pressure at all on putting some on and some Mom’s come in only mascara.

While preparing for your maternity photoshoot you should also have finger and toe nails clean with no polish or a neutral shade to match the outfits you pre-select. In some outfits your legs or feet may be showing.