32/52 - Belly Shirt

A friend of Paige's recently had a maternity shoot done and got a picture that looked like this one.  Paige saw it on Facebook and showed it to me.  I really liked the picture a lot and asked her if she wanted to take one like it.  I immediately knew where I wanted to shoot the picture and just needed to get her on board with standing out next to the house to let me capture it.

Her friend's picture was next to an old barn or something because the background was of worn, cracked, faded wood.  I knew I didn't have anything like that around our house, but we do have a brick wall on one side of the house that I thought would look great behind her.

So, I set up the light out in the drive way, got the lighting set the way I wanted it and had her come out.  She was a little embarassed to be standing outside with her belly hanging out while I was shooting.  Every time she would see someone coming down the street, walking by or going past our house, she would run back into the garage so that they wouldn't see her.

After a few shots, I got the one that I wanted...all in all, it took about 5 minutes to set up and 5 minutes to shoot (including the time she spent hiding in the garage).

In post-processing, I turned up the contrast a little, darkened the colors of the bricks and added a little extra blur on the background, so it would fade out a little bit and not be so pronounced.  Then, I just cropped it the way she wanted and that was it.

Let me know what you think.

T.