Jessie & Hannah’s Clearwater, Florida Maternity Photos - Clearwater Beach Maternity Portraits
So my best friend lives thousands and thousands of miles away from me…or 909 miles to be exact, in Clearwater, Florida! And when I found out that Hannah was pregnant with their first child I just had to fly down there to photograph this special moment in their life. Of course I may have or possibly sort of threatened them with finding a new best friend if I didn’t get to photograph them, but they of course wanted me to do their maternity photos even without the intense pressure of finding a new best friend, haha.
We woke up super early on a Friday morning, during the hottest time of the year, to get ready for the sweatiest and mosquito infested photo shoot of my life. Around 7 o’clock we made it to Clearwater Beach along Eldorado Avenue and of course as soon as we got out of the car my camera lens fogged up due to the drastic change in temperature and humidity. So once my lens got un-fogged and while Jessie was filling up the balloons with helium, I gave Hannah a quick talk on how she should pose and where she needs to be. After the little talk we had an amazing time! Hannah was posing so beautifully, I could not be happier. We took a million photos all over the beach with just Hannah, then Jessie and Hannah, and then some detail shots before we moved on to the next beach.
Next stop, Honeymoon Island State Park! Unfortunately the timing was not great as the sun was out on full blast already and because of this there is a lot of squinting going on as well as overexposed backgrounds. To try our best to compensate for this I used my flash to even out the exposure as best we could and I told Hannah to keep her eyes closed while she faces the sun. We had some awesome driftwood to shoot in and later we got Hannah and Jessie to cool off in the water a little.
When we left Honeymoon Island I noticed the clouds came in and covered the sun…awesome timing! We really could’ve used that cloud coverage as a giant diffuser, but that’s okay.
We went back to their house to recover and eat something. After a few hours of napping and laying in the pool, we went back out. This time we went to Anclote Gulf Park and Key Vista Nature Park for the day’s final photos. All I have to say is Wow! I never sweated so much in my life. Never had so many man-eating mosquitos tear into my ankles before. I was dying and it did not help that we of course forgot the bug spray. Nevertheless we got some excellent photos. Despite being eaten alive and melting away…I think I shrunk three inches…Jessie and Hannah were nothing but smiles and I could not have asked for better models to tough this all out. The last few photos we took this day required Photoshop. This is because we had a fantastic sunset behind the trees, but our setup time took a bit longer as we were constantly stopping to smack the mosquitos. I used my flash to light up Jessie and Hannah situated between four candles in the middle of nice nature path. With other people walking by, my tripod came in super handy as it made the photo blending much easier.
The next day we were toast. I had more aloe vera and cortizone on my body then I ever thought possible.
So when Sunday came around, we had to get Hannah out of the house so their friends could secretly come in and decorate it for a virtual baby shower. So after a very long, but super delicious breakfast, we took a few photos at the Historic Andrews Memorial Chapel where they got married several years ago just so we could kill some more time. We weren’t out there more than 15 minutes before we started dripping sweat again haha. Then we drove around to Baillies Bluff Road to take some more nature photos in an area that appeared to be under construction. Beautiful site with an amazing tree. So after a few photos we finally made it back home, but before we went in Jessie wanted me to stall Hannah while he went inside real quick to make sure the Zoom meeting was working and everything was ready. So as we walked in, Hannah was in complete surprise to see all of her family and friends on the tv screen and the house decorated for the baby shower. It was an excellent way to finish an awesome weekend maternity photo shoot!
We took over 2,600 photos and I ended up uploading almost 900 photos to their online gallery! It took a few weeks to Style their photos, but I’m very happy with the way they turned out. And when I sent them the link to their photo gallery, I found out that they were in the hospital waiting around to give birth to Leandro, their first child, first son which happened the very next day.
Thank you both so much for letting me photograph this amazing moment in your guys’ life!
See you guys soon!