People often ask me about my favorite subject to photograph.

Generally, I answer the same way.

“All of it. When I’m shooting weddings, I love couples in love. When I’m photographing seniors, I love hearing about their future plans and capturing the now. When I get to photograph families, I love crawling around with the kiddos and playing and running amuck and laughing so hard. When I get to photograph events, I love the details and the efforts into making a solid project come together.”

Perhaps there are no favorites. Perhaps there are only glorious experiences that we get to see just a slice of…and that’s beautiful and wonderful and amazing.

But I will tell you that there is one single experience that is so unbelievably different from the others.

Birth photography.

I get funny looks from most people, and even a few dogs, when I say that birth photography is part of my repertoire. Like…alot. Super weird looks. It’s both mildly awkward and also a smidge funny. I mean, take a second and think about what you’re envisioning when I say ‘birth photography’. Do you immediately picture a screaming mom, a sweating dad and loads of blood and guts and upclose and personal accounts of the mom’s hoo-ha?

Yeah…I thought so. It’s not like that.

Not one little bit.

When I’m photographing a birth, I love all of it.

I love arriving to the hospital before the couple to capture the scenes of the day. The blue of the sky, the glimmer of the sun. The beginning. The anxiousness and excitement of all involved as the time they have been waiting weeks, months, years for is finally happening. I love stepping back and taking in the calm before the storm. The giddy conversation that slowly breaks way into deep breaths and quiet murmurs. I love capturing the pacing, the informing of friends and family in the waiting room, the birth bets, the snippets of laughter between strengthening contractions. I love watching dad watch mom. How the transformation from man to father happens right before our eyes. So quickly, so fleeting. How he watches over the mother of his child with kind, worried eyes and strong hands; massaging her hips, helping her walk, solidly holding her gaze as she squints hard and grips his hand tightly. I love watching mom watch dad. How she endures the pain, falling into the agony and helplessness that is motherhood. How she reaches for him when the pain gets too much, how she listens to the way he whispers into her ear. How she wraps herself both into her pain and then around the two of them; as if there was no one else in the room. How she leans, hard, into the throes of birthing her baby. I love watching, no, feeling the energy in the room shift as babe finally decides the time is now. Desperation and misery give way to hope, determination and pure joy. Happiness that will never be so easily felt, so freely given, so utterly affecting all in its presence.

It’s like nothing I’ve ever photographed.

Every time…every time I’m invited into the delivery room…

…it’s simply a flawless blessing.

***

Doula service by Sheila Holz of Birth and Beyond Empowered :: A huge shout out and thank you to the always amazing nursing staff, fabulous doctors and other medical staff and 24 hour coffee availability of the Northfield Hospital Birth Center. Seriously-these women are the best of the best!

 

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