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Your baby is gorgeous. The truth of the matter is babies are pretty easy to photograph for professional photographers and many parents alike. They are adored and unselfconscious. They don’t know how they should look so they just look delicious.
But mums who have just had a baby need a bit more tender loving care to really shine in front of the camera and not every photographer is a master at making women comfortable in their changed shape…and dads tend to suck at it.

It feels safer behind the lens instead of in front of it now

More often than not many mums just prefer to focus on this amazing creation that they have made and forget about themselves because they barely recognize their body anymore. They are proud it made something so amazing but they are not so happy about its resistance to immediately return to its prepregnancy state. (Just so you know that sproing that you sometimes see models and actresses do is a freak of nature and I have only seen it happen to real women twice in the 12 years I worked helping women to deliver their babies…yep that is what I did before winning all of my photography awards and trading in my stethoscope for a fancy camera.)

So with society saying you need to look like X, and your body saying “hang on…I just created life can you give me a minute or two to compose myself.” You may just not feel like jumping in front of a camera lens. Much safer to hang out behind one. Fair enough.
The problem is this can become chronic. And if you aren’t careful by the time your baby is ready to graduate you will have bugger all images of you all together because your face was comfortably hidden behind the lens.

I so get it. I was there.

It is totally fixable

But the brilliant part is I got over it. Not only did I get over it but I became a master of helping women get over their body hang ups and camera shyness and have taught them how to completely rock their amazingness where they are in their brilliant body right this very moment…not when they lose x amount of weight or train for x marathon…but now…in the delicious present.

Check out what I just did with this mother and daughter who had both dodged the cameras throughout their children’s lives:

Don’t hide from your family’s visual history

Think about it. When we are in our early twenties more often than not we look GOOD. But are often unlikely to think we do. From the vantage point of our thirties we often think “I should have OWNED that!”

The same holds true now. Put yourself in your shoes when you are 80 in a rocking chair. Do you think you will give a flying fart that you didn’t look perfect? Or will you care about the connection that you can see with your gorgeous buby?

My kids are 14-17 now. That went like a rocket. I am starting to get teary eyed thinking of them leaving the nest. But darn skippy do I have some beautiful photographs of them to hold me into my dotage.

The rocking thing is that I look pretty good in most of them. I learned the tricks of how to not double chin myself even though I was looking down at my gorgeous bub. When you come to see me I will teach you the same things. These are skills you get to keep and take away with you.

Sending you lots of love,

Mandi Lynn