Nikki Nude at 7 Months

A Maternity Photoshoot

NSFW

Before I get to Nikki, I just wanted to say that I'm viewing this on a new 34 inch, curved screen, LG monitor.  This is a big upgrade for me and I'm really impressed.  One very important thing any serious photographer should do is calibrate their monitor for brightness and color.  I use an automatic calibration device called Color Munki, but there are less expensive ones that will do the job well.  If you don't calibrate your monitor, you have no idea how your images will look to the folks who view them on their own devices.  Even if you do calibrate, remember that your viewers rarely calibrate their own monitors, so you still don't really know how they are seeing your work.  But at least you did your part, right?  So let's move on to the lovely Nikki!

Nikki is a stunning local model who just happens to be seven months pregnant.  We agreed to do a shoot in my studio so that you, my loyal readers, could see a great example of a sexy, nude, maternity photoshoot.

We started out with my two big 5-foot long strip lights, powered by Alien Bees, providing front illumination.  There were two more Alien Bees with grids behind the model to act as hair or rim lights.  I like to have the model sit on a simple stool for the first photos, while I have her move her head in different directions.  I call this "learning the face" since everyone has good and bad angles.  Whatever I learn by doing this, I apply to the rest of the photoshoot.  

As I always do for studio shoots, I'm using my trusty Canon 5D Mark 3 at ISO 100.  I'd like to say that I was using some exotic prime lens, but this entire shoot was done with an old Canon 24-105 F/4 L IS lens.  Since I planned to shoot at F/5.6, there was little reason to use anything more sophisticated.  Most of these shots were done between 35mm and 60mm.  Too bad nobody makes a zoom like that, I'd buy one immediately!

We moved on to some more revealing standing and posed positions.  You can see the boudoir/glamour photography influence.  Notice the prominent rim lighting in the next photo.

I decided to try some high key photography with the white backdrop.  At first, I used no front illumination, in an attempt to create a silhouette effect.  There were only two Alien Bees in operation, both aimed at the white backdrop.  After looking at the resulting images, I decided to lighten them up in post processing, which gave them an interesting soft look.  I also reduced the "clarity" which is a wonderful option in Adobe Lightroom.  Not the silhouette look I had envisioned, but still attractive. 

Next, I switched on the two soft boxes to provide front illumination, which is my normal high-key look.

If you would like to see more photos from this shoot, click here for a gallery of select images.  I did very little retouching on these, so you can tell more about how they were created.  

If you are a potential client and would like to talk to me about doing a private shoot for you, please take a look at my FAQ.

Thanks for dropping in!  If you'd like to thank Nikki for posing for us, you can find her Model Mayhem profile here.