Hey everybody! This is Cristel’s husband, Joe, here today as this post has a bit of a backstory – Cristel will be back soon with a follow-up post to this one with all the baby loveliness you have come to expect from her and her beautiful work.
Some of you may know that I work as a Raleigh wedding photographer and I get to meet a lot of lovely people along the way. It’s always great to stay in touch with my couples after they tie the knot and it’s always a real honour when they ask me to photograph new milestones in their lives. For me, it’s what wedding and portrait photography is all about really: documentation of the evolution of a family over the years, those moments of anticipation, joy and happiness, new relationships, new arrivals and new beginnings.
Anyway, I was lucky enough to photograph Hallie & Cullen’s wedding just under a year ago and I was thrilled when they reached out to me to let me know they were expecting and to ask if we could set up maternity and newborn sessions to mark the occasion. Well, I received a message earlier today to let me know the great news of a 9 lb 1 oz baby boy who will be visiting our studio in the next few days to have his newborn baby photos taken by Cristel! So, with this exciting news, I thought now would be a perfect time to share some of the photos from Hallie & Cullen’s maternity session from back in July. Well, it was actually really more of a Maternity & Paternity session as we took a lot of photos of Dad too. 🙂
For the session, we headed up to Duke Gardens, where I am a member photographer and it came up in conversation as we walked around that Hallie’s Mum and Dad were married there, though she’d never actually been there before. Cullen had been there before as a little boy and had even had his photo taken there. It was great to know the family history with the location and it was so cool when I learnt after the fact that some of my favourite photos from the session were actually taken on the very spot where Hallie’s parents had been married: the pergola at the top of the flower gardens. The light and symmetry of that spot were just perfect.
Here are just a few of my faves from the shoot:
