As a maternity photographer, you will specialise in photographing heavily pregnant women, most likely with their partner, children or other family members.
A maternity session usually takes place during the late second and early third trimester when a woman is clearly "showing" that she is pregnant.
Generally, there are three main types of maternity photography.
An Outdoor Session
An outdoor maternity session takes place in a beautiful outdoor location, usually in the middle of nature. Generally, this style of session focuses heavily on the location itself as well as using lots of natural light to create a dreamy, ethereal feel to the images.
This style has become increasingly popular in recent years and is a good choice if you are in or live close to an area of outstanding natural beauty.
A Home Session
A home maternity session is a hugely popular choice for mothers-to-be as unlike an outdoor session, it is very private and intimate. This can often make potential mothers feel more comfortable and therefore more likely to let go of any inhibitions she may have about posing or having her photograph taken.
Equally, having a maternity session conducted at home gives a wonderful insight into life before baby became part of the family. For example, mum and dad-to-be spending time with the bump, the nursery ready and waiting for the new arrival and even younger children (or furry siblings) waiting excitedly to meet the new addition.
This can create a wonderful memento to look back on.
A Studio Session
A studio maternity session is another popular choice, especially amongst photographers as it gives you far more control over certain aspects of the shoot. For example, the lighting, location, posing, props etc.
This is a particularly good choice if you are going to be offering nude maternity images.
Your maternity photography website should be designed to reflect your personal style as well as attract your ideal client. The majority of maternity photographers aim to create a timeless, elegant and soft website that mimics a similar style to a baby photographer, but a little more grown-up in order to appeal to their target clientele, usually expectant mothers.
For this reason, consider a soft colour palette, elegant fonts and light, bright portfolios showcasing beautiful maternity portraits.
On the other hand, some maternity photographers prefer to go down a more dramatic route, focusing instead on deep colour palettes and moody portfolios of artistic maternity portraiture.
Either way, many maternity photographers also wish to give their website visitors a bit of "wow factor" to showcase their beautiful images as well as illustrate why they should invest in professional maternity portraits. The banner links page is just one way in which this can be achieved. By displaying a beautiful, full-width image at the top of your web page, you can create an immediate and lasting impression on clients.
Another way to impress a potential client is by using the blurb page. A blurb page allows you to, again, display a full-width image behind a box of text, with the option to include an access code box. For this reason, this page type makes a particularly beautiful client area page.
On a practical note, it is important that all maternity photographers implement the appropriate privacy settings. There are two options that we would highly recommend.
The first is to set your collections to "private". This option will display an access code box, with the images inside the collection only viewable to those with the correct password.
On the other hand, you could set your collections to "preview only". In this instance, an access code box will display but with one collection image alongside it. This image is selected by you, the photographer, and can be changed at any time.
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If you use social media for business, we would highly recommend liking your social media platforms to your website. This not only makes it easier for potential customers to find you and follow along with your posts but is also great for your search engine optimisation. You can link to your social media platforms from anywhere on your website, however, the most common places are your website header, website footer, and contact page.
Pop-Up Boxes
A pop-up box appears on your website periodically, according to your chosen schedule. For example, it can display on every page on your website or just a selected one, such as your home page. A pop-up box is designed to initiate a particular response from the visitor as well as isolate their attention to what you consider to be the most important message. For example, to encourage a visitor to purchase a product, book a session, spend over a certain amount, follow your business on social media or sign up to your mailing list.
Notification Bars
Notification bars are mainly used as either an announcement bar or a cookie bar.
An announcement bar generally displays current, important information to your visitors and should be updated fairly regularly. Announcement bars could be used to display information such as flash sales, seasonal announcements, holiday breaks, scheduled maintenance, special opening times and other important announcements (i.e. Covid-19 pandemic, GDPR etc).
Alternatively, a cookie bar is used to link to your cookie and privacy policy so that visitors can read, should they want to, how you handle their information and data. A cookie policy is required on any website using persistent cookies i.e. if you are offering gift vouchers to customers.
If in doubt, we would recommend that you always display a cookie policy, just to be on the safe side!
Cover photos are a beautiful way of introducing your client to their private gallery. A collection's cover photo displays one large, full-screen image with the collection title in the centre. The image is chosen by you, the photographer, and the settings can be customised to best suit the collection requirements. You can also select a different image and settings for each collection, therefore giving you complete control over the appearance of each cover photo.
Your client gallery is an important aspect of your website. After all, it is the main way that clients will view and purchase their images from you. Therefore, you want it to be beautiful as well as functional.
Using big, responsive thumbnails allows you to display image thumbnails as big as you want within responsive client gallery layouts. Not only that but you can customise the appearance of your client galleries even more by selecting different watermark profiles depending on the media type displayed, giving your customer's a unique, well-designed experience.
You can sell anything in an online shop with theimagefile, from physical products (such as traditional prints and other photo products) and stand-alone products to digital downloads, and services.
As a maternity photographer, we understand that most of your sales are likely to be downloads, prints and other photographic products. However, with an online storefront, you can also sell gift vouchers or even other services, such as mini sessions.