PHOTOGRAPHED 2024 · COEUR D’ALENE, IDAHO
Evidence of Becoming | Maternity Session at Tubbs Hill
Before there are photographs of three, there are still photographs of two.
There is something strange and beautiful about photographing two people in the middle of becoming someone new.
Before there are photographs of three, there are still photographs of two.
Two people walking beside the water. Two hands reaching instinctively for one another. A palm resting over a growing belly. The familiar way they stand together while everything around them quietly begins to change.
Photographed on a summer evening at Tubbs Hill in Coeur d’Alene, this session wasn’t only about preserving what pregnancy looked like.
It was about remembering what this season of *them* felt like.
Maternity photographs can belong to both of you.
Maternity photography so often centers the person carrying the baby—and there is something worth honoring in the transformation of their body.
But I don't think the story ends there.
Pregnancy is also a chapter in a relationship. There is the person growing a baby and the person standing beside them. The anticipation they share. The tenderness already taking shape before they ever hold their child in their arms. So we made photographs of her. We made photographs of him. And mostly, we made photographs of our sweet babe.
Because someday these images won't only show their child what their mother looked like while carrying them. They'll show, who their parents were together while waiting for them to arrive. A photograph that carries a story of arrival and anticipation for generations to come.
The Details That Change...
Pregnancy leaves its evidence in ordinary places.
A hand that finds its way to a growing belly. The changing shape of a familiar body. The clothes worn through this particular summer. The way two people begin making room for someone they haven't met yet.
None of these details feel especially extraordinary while you're living inside of them.
That's usually why they're the ones I want to remember.
Tubbs Hill
Tubbs Hill sits along the shoreline of Lake Coeur d'Alene, but what I love about photographing here is how much the landscape changes as you move through it.
Forest gives way to exposed rock. Trails wind toward the water. There are quiet pockets beneath the trees and wide views across the lake.
So instead of spending the evening standing in one picturesque spot, we moved through it.
We walked. We climbed onto the rocks. We wandered toward the shoreline. They talked, touched, rested and existed together while I photographed what unfolded between them.
That's often where my favorite photographs live—not in performing for the camera, but somewhere inside actually experiencing the evening together.
Photographs From Before Everything Changed...
Maybe that's what I love most about maternity photographs.
At the time, they're about anticipation.
Later, they become something else.
Evidence of the body that carried you. The clothes your parents wore. The tattoos you knew before you knew what they meant. The way one of them reached for the other. Who they were together before they ever knew who you would become.
Somewhere inside these photographs are two people who haven't met their baby yet.
Standing at the edge of Lake Coeur d'Alene, still two.
Not for very much longer.
And that is worth remembering, too.
