Danagoa

I was an only child for a while and then 5 siblings came along and my son's have all these aunts and uncles now. But the first baby after me that lighted up our house and family was baby Yamila, my cousin who is more like my aunt's daughter. She had the biggest brown eyes, beautiful smile and gorgeous thick black hair. What can you expect from a mix of Puerto Rican and Brazilian? She is too cute! and now 20 years later, that baby who a friend of the family nickname danagua ( something to do with water but a made up word) is expecting a baby of her own. I was very nervous for the shoot, mixed with personal issues and still amazed that this little cousin will be a mommy, overwhelming I guess. One thing is for sure, time passed you by so I like this quote I saw today on twitter. Tomorrow is mystery, yesterday is history and today is something we call a present. Something like that. Here are a few shots from the outside shoot.

Francine

This was my very first mother daughter maternity shoot and I was excited and also worried on new poses I wanted to try, in the end it was not such a huge hurdle because what is maternity all about? motherhood! and why not take pictures with the woman who had that big belly for 9 months or so and gave you life.Now you can share those experiences and capture them to show your kids and their kids. Francine, was great to shoot, big smile and had a girly look to her, that look perhaps we all women had before giving birth. Tania Francine's mom is an upbeat, high strung woman who I look up to. She wakes up 5:30 am to take a bus to go and clean houses for a living and she is happy as a kid expecting her soon to be born grandson Felipe David. Francine just had her baby shower, has lots of diapers to use up in the near future and is due March 30th. Here are some of our shots for the day!

The Bumps

Lots of editing still to come and more pictures to post of the awesome two maternity shoots I had this weekend of mommy Francine and mommy Rita. I love preggies! and when I shoot a maternity session, I really try to get differant angles and do crazy stuff to get a glimpse of the essence of the woman, the mom, the girl or the parents that is behind that bump, I luv pictures that speaks to me, that you can almost taste or smell so I aim for that. As I said before, every picture tells a story and I want to capture yours so here is an ad for all you pregnant Jersey and Philly moms to start calling moi!

Grandma's Bread Pudding

My late grandma Feuza, would always make this type of Brazilian Bread Pudding with fresh grated coconut and yuca, (hard to explain) for my father every time he visited Brazil. And for me she always made this cus cus dessert even harder to explain, but involved fresh grated coconut and sweet condensed milk, yummyyyy. The most beautiful thing about it was that it was guaranteed, she would always make it because she wanted to please us, she wanted to express her love and appreciation and how much she had missed us since we have lived here in the US. Yesterday's maternity photo shoot reminded me of her Bread Pudding because the word pleasing just kept coming into my mind. I have never seen a husband compliment his wife so much as I did see Rodrigo. He went upstairs to get her outfits and made sure his shirts matched hers. He told her how beautiful her makeup was and how gorgeous she looks at 8 months pregnant and then during the shoot he told her she looked like a model and so forth. And Rita just smiled and smiled and her smile was shining brighter than yesterday's winter sun. The shoot was so unique, winter, snow,sun, beach but most of all it had two very loving people who always aim to please each other and out of this union they are expecting Hannah. Here are some shots but there are many more to come.