31 weeks, 4 days: Maternity Pictures

T, Tay and I met with a photographer I found on Craig's List from San Diego.  He was going to be in town visiting family and was looking to do a little work while he was here.  After many emails back and forth and examining his website, I decided to hire him to do our maternity photos.  It was a little nerve wracking for me, in a way, because I don't know this photographer and I wasn't sure of his capabilities.  On top of that, his pricing was VERY reasonable...almost to the point of scaring me.  What am I missing?  What will we actually get?  Are we only going to have a handful of photos to choose from?

Let me just say...we SCORED!  Bob was awesome and GREAT to work with.  We shot our pictures at Agua Caliente Park on the extreme EAST side of Tucson (completely opposite from home) this morning.  We were to meet him at 10 but, with T and Tay moving a tad slow in the mornings (and an hour drive to the park), we ended up being about 10 or so minutes late. 

On the drive, I was a little worried about how we were all going to mesh together.  To accentuate my anxiety, the three of us had not had breakfast (because we were running late) and Tay started feeling pretty sick in the car.  So much so that she was curled in a ball with her head on the arm rest.  I had bought her some cheese crackers and a water to hold her over because I thought it was from her not eating.  I certainly wasn't going to push her to take photos if she wasn't up for it but it did raise my anxiety level wondering how she was going to handle the entire photo shoot.

We finally arrived at the park and Bob and his brother Charlie were already there.  Of course, stereotypical of the pregnant woman, I had to pee right away.  But something I noticed as I was walking up to shake their hands, we were all going to get along very well!  Tay was a little shy at first and was still kind of dragging.  But, once Bob introduced himself and started talking to her, he (and his camera) became her best friend!!  Her energy went from 0 to 100 in a matter of five minutes!!  And, WOW did she have fun.  (Certainly helped that Bob has two daughters of his own and knows how they tick!)

We talked a bit about what we were looking for and T and I both told him he was in control!  We wanted him to do what he thought looked good.  We aren't the artsy fartsy kind with photos.  We like the straight up shots for the most part.  And we just wanted a couple of good family photos to document this awesome, possible 'once in a lifetime' experience.  I knew that his price of $149 included an hour session and a CD of all the originals but I wasn't sure how many photos that would get us.  Obviously an hour and a HALF of shooting and 113 photos (originals) that we can edit and play with on our Mac!!!

Quick funny story before showing some photos...

This old guy with a volunteer name badge came over to us while we were shooting by the little creek.  He informs us of the ranch house that we just had to see.  He thought we would like to do some photos in there.  Well, we eventually made our way to the ranch house that is laid out like a museum of sorts.  As we walked in to look for spots to shoot, Old Man Volunteer came over and started talking to us.  He wanted to take us on a tour.  We all just kind of looked at each other and we all tried to explain to him that we were just looking around, may take a couple of photos and that we were on a tight timeline.  I swear it was as if we were talking to a ghost - maybe it WAS!  Maybe it was a residual haunting.  A ghost that does the same thing over and over and one that you cannot communicate with...visually he looked kinda like someone out of a haunted movie so...hmmm...

He did look at me and then at my stomach and told me that I, for sure, would like to see the kitchen.  WHAT?  Why would I, specifically, like to see the KITCHEN?!?  We joked later as we were rushing away from the house that I should have knocked off my shoes and blacked out a couple of teeth before going in there.  Nothing says Kentucky girl better than barefoot, pregnant and missing some incisors!  Again...why is it that I would want to see the kitchen??  Well, we finally did get away.  We had to be a bit more abrupt than I typically like to be but, geez, what the hell ya gonna do in that situation??

We had such a fun morning - all of us - that I just have to give props where props are due:
**I highly recommend Craigs List for...well...just about anything.  We actually sold an item that has been in our garage for quite a while (still in its original packaging) for $125 and then hired an AWESOME photographer off of Craigs List for $149.  What a DEAL!
**If you are in the San Diego area EVER and need a photographer - Robert Buchanan (Bob) of Moonlight Portraits.  http://www.moonlightportraits.com/  He is VERY easy to get along with and is a lot of fun to hang out with!  And he will send you originals so that you can make any modifications you want (which we can do easily and quite well with iPhoto on our Mac).  He uploaded our photos TODAY after our shoot and we will be meeting him tomorrow to pick up the CD with all images.  Talk about AWESOME turn around time!  And T and I just prefer to have the originals so that we can manipulate what we want, if we want.

So here are some of the photos from our shoot today.  These are all originals that may (or may not) be modified somewhat by us when we decide which ones we are going to blow up and print.  What's awesome is that we can use a printer that will only charge us $.12 or less for an 8 x 12 photo!!  So we are planning on printing quite a few!!  Oh, and there is a link after the pics if you want to see ALL of the photos (some aren't really faves of mine because I look like I swallowed a freaking whale).  But there are a lot of photos of Tay that are AWESOME!  She really came alive (she always seems to) when the camera started snapping!  And Bob has made a friend for life!

Enjoy!  We sure did!

















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The link to see all photos (again, some not so good because of my lack of photogenic genes):
http://www.ritzpix.com/net/Albums/ListImages.aspx?album=BF6C9027CEC24DC5A2589F0C029205A005F802643BF5E94168768484E9F6ED33&tabColor=green

Next update: Tuesday, October 27 after our 32 week ultrasound!