DEL MAR, CALIFORNIA - There’s something different about photographing somebody the second time around.

The first time, they’re learning you.

Learning the camera.

Learning whether your weird little directions are actually going somewhere.

The second time?

They already know.

Elizabeth first trusted us with her maternity photographs back in May 2023.

Then, on March 16, 2025, she came back.

Another pregnancy.

Another baby.

Another chapter.

And this time there was a calmness about her from the beginning.

She knew what the experience was going to feel like.

She knew what we were going to ask of her.

More importantly, she trusted where we were taking it.

That changes things.

I generally don’t go into a second maternity session thinking:

How do we make this completely different from the first one?

That’s not really the point.

The photography can still belong to the same world.

The same Black Rider Studios language.

Moody.

Romantic.

Dreamy.

Cinematic.

What changes is the person standing in front of the camera.

And the baby.

This wasn’t the same connection Elizabeth experienced during her first pregnancy.

How could it be?

Different child.

Different moment in her life.

Different version of herself.

That’s what I was interested in.

Not reinventing maternity photography just because this was round two.

Photographing this connection.

This mother.

This baby.

This particular season.

When somebody books a portrait session with us, I usually start with a pretty simple question:

What kind of backdrop do you want?

Beach?

Forest?

Desert?

Mountains?

Something else?

From there, I start going through locations I’ve already photographed or places I’ve stumbled across while randomly wandering around San Diego County.

Elizabeth and her husband both wanted the coast, but they weren’t looking for exactly the same thing.

He wanted the ocean.

Elizabeth wanted the ocean with something else.

More character.

More layers.

Something beyond sand, water, horizon.

That’s one of the things I love about the coastline around San Diego County.

You can ask for the beach without necessarily getting only a beach.

I gave Elizabeth several options.

She chose Del Mar.

Good choice.

I care a lot about backgrounds.

Probably more than most people realize when they’re looking at a portrait.

The background isn’t there because we needed somewhere to put Elizabeth.

It’s doing part of the storytelling.

The cliffs already gave these photographs character.

The rocks brought shape and texture.

Then you add trees and vegetation and suddenly there’s another layer of wonder around her.

But not too much.

That part matters.

More detail isn’t automatically better.

Eventually the background starts yelling louder than the person you’re photographing.

I don’t want that.

I want enough landscape to give the image atmosphere without turning Elizabeth into something you have to search for.

Del Mar gave us that balance.

Ocean.

Stone.

Greenery.

Open sky.

Then Elizabeth.

Everything doing its job without fighting for attention.

I always like including the father in maternity photographs.

He belongs there.

He’s part of what’s happening.

But my maternity sessions are primarily about the connection between the mother and the baby she’s carrying.

That’s the center.

Dad comes into that world.

He embraces her.

He holds her.

He becomes part of the anticipation surrounding the baby.

But for a few months, mother and child are sharing something nobody else can completely enter.

That’s extraordinary.

So Elizabeth’s husband appears in the photographs.

He should.

But the camera keeps coming back to her.

The hands on her belly.

The dress moving around her.

The stillness.

Her expression.

The quiet relationship already happening between two people even though only one of them has technically arrived.

That might be what stood out to me most.

Elizabeth was calm.

Not staged-calm.

Not the kind of expression a photographer asks for when he says:

Okay, now look peaceful.

She just was.

Maybe some of that came from knowing us already.

Maybe some came from having gone through pregnancy and motherhood before.

Probably both.

There was less uncertainty surrounding the experience.

She could settle into it.

And that calmness gave me everything else I wanted from the photographs.

Beautiful.

Powerful.

Maternal.

Romantic.

Peaceful.

Those qualities don’t have to compete with one another.

A maternity portrait can feel soft without making a woman fragile.

It can feel maternal without forgetting she’s still a woman.

It can feel powerful without becoming aggressive.

Elizabeth carried all of it quietly.

That’s what maternity photography really is to me.

A celebration of motherhood.

Yes, we’re documenting what somebody looked like during pregnancy.

That’s part of it.

But if all I give you is evidence that your stomach was larger for a few months, I think we’ve missed something pretty important.

There is a person inside there.

A relationship already beginning.

A mother already wondering.

Already loving.

Already carrying someone everywhere she goes.

That deserves more than documentation.

It deserves an experience.

A little time where motherhood isn’t surrounded by doctor appointments, planning, exhaustion, lists, nursery decisions and everything else life is throwing at you.

For a while, the entire point is:

Look at what is happening.

Look at you.

Look at this child.

Look at this strange, beautiful thing your body is doing.

We’re going to make photographs of it.

When Elizabeth received the photographs, she told me:

“Yes we love them, thank you.”

She also had opinions about which dress photographed better.

Apparently the yellow one won.

Fair enough.

Clients are allowed to have favorites.

What mattered to me was that she loved the photographs.

Two maternity sessions later, there was still something worth discovering together.

And she was already talking about coming back for family photographs.

That’s one of my favorite parts of this job.

Sometimes a maternity client isn’t really a maternity client.

They’re somebody whose family you’re slowly getting invited to watch grow.

Every pregnancy carries its own personality, even when we’ve photographed the family before.

Jackie & Louie’s La Jolla maternity story follows another returning family as they prepared for a second child, showing how motherhood and the relationship between two parents can deepen between pregnancies.

You can also explore Claudia & Erick’s Santa Ysabel maternity story, where the experience centers on first-time parenthood, anticipation, and wondering what life will look like once the baby finally arrives.

One mother returning for another pregnancy.

Another couple waiting to become parents for the first time.

Different landscapes.

Different chapters.

The same incredible thing happening underneath all of it.

Black Rider Studios creates maternity photography around motherhood, connection, atmosphere, and the anticipation surrounding a child who hasn’t arrived yet.

The location matters.

The dress matters.

The light matters.

But none of those things are the reason we’re there.

Motherhood is.

We’ll help you choose an environment around the feeling you want.

We’ll guide you through the photographs.

We’ll bring your partner into the story.

Then we’ll keep returning to the connection that matters most:

you and your baby.

The first pregnancy introduces you to motherhood.The next one doesn’t repeat it.It adds another person to the story.Elizabeth already knew what it felt like to stand in front of our camera.This time, she simply had someone new to introduce us to.