Birth photography is an investment
Birth photography is an investment. An investment in yourself, in the opportunity to document your strength, your power and vulnerability. In the lasting testament to those moments of joy, intensity, and anguish, along with support, perseverance, love, wisdom, doubt, wonder, and awe. Birth is all of these things and even more, and having birth photography done is an investment worth making to have the memories saved.
Birth photography is an investment in the future, in being able to show your child the first seconds of their air-breathing existence. Seeing your own face when you see your baby’s face for the first time, this new person you’ve been waiting so patiently to meet, is sublime. You will never forget the visceral soul kick that is that moment, but birth photography helps seal in the visual notes.
Birth photography is an investment in the uncertainty. I consider myself a birth worker in more ways than one (besides being a doula, the photography is a form of a birth work). Birth photography can help you process your experience, however it went.
Birth photography is an investment in the story. Most people think that birth photography is all about The Moment, which is important, of course, but my passion for birth photography is all of those other things: the story of your experience for the labor and the birth. I want to tell the story of the anticipation, the frustrations, the limits, the climb and the fall, as you take this most primal of mammal journeys to birth a person (however they come).
And so birth photography is an investment in the traditional sense. Most people are surprised to discover that birth photography can be expensive, but it’s important to remember not just how priceless the photographs are for an occasion that can not be re-done, but to remember all that goes in to the photographer’s work:
As your birth photographer, I am on-call 24/7 from 38 weeks. This is the biggest commitment I make to you, because that means that I can’t go very far (certainly wouldn’t leave the Island), or make any plans I can’t quickly abandon. I go to bed each night knowing that this could be the night I get called in the middle, and I could be at your birth for 30 hours, or 18, or 3. There is no predicting when you will need me and for how long. I need to have my own childcare lined up and to be ready to leave my other job if necessary.
As your birth photographer, I am constantly looking for ways to hone my professional training and skills (for example, adding doula to my services).
Birth photography is an investment in every sense of the word. If you are having a baby soon, I’d love to connect with you about how birth photography might interest you.