Creating images of motherhood can be rewarding but challenging. From the moment a woman learns she is pregnant until she sends her baby away to college, any image can be considered a motherhood moment. This class focuses on the beginning of this journey including maternity, birth, fresh 48, newborn, and breastfeeding portraits. 

You will learn how to capture beautiful maternity portraits using custom gowns from Sew Trendy Accessories and how to include the entire family in the portrait session. We will cover the intimate moments of a birth story, capturing that very first breath of new life, and those most precious first moments as a family. We will also discuss capturing the “Fresh 48” images that are captured in the first 48 hours of life. You will learn the best place to get situated in the hospital room, what images are preferred from this monumental event, and how to incorporate breastfeeding images into these sessions. 

We will discuss newborn portraits, basic images, and more complicated composites. We will learn how to take newborn portraiture into the fine art realm and create masterpieces and one-of-a-kind images for parents that they can cherish for many generations. A solid foundation in Photoshop helps as we discuss how to manipulate elements for a composited image. We will explore finding ideas, safely capturing newborn images for the composite, and capturing the digital background.

After we discuss portrait sessions and editing, there will be a brief overview of marketing and selling images and products to your clients. We will explore products such as folio boxes, memory albums, and prints. You will learn about vendors, vendor relationships, props, and gear. You will even get some pro tips on competing with these images.  You will walk away from this class ready to tackle everything that is included in the motherhood journey. I can’t wait to share with you the fun and exciting world that I find myself in daily.

Bio

Tara Ruby is deeply embedded in military life, being a disabled veteran and a military spouse as well as a mother to an Army Officer. She has a sincere love of working to support our US Military and the families nestled within. She has worked to pioneer her own personal style of motherhood and military photography that has earned awards from organizations such as Wedding and Portrait Photographers International (WPPI), Professional Photographers of America (PPA), National Association of Professional Child Photographers (NAPCP) as well as within the Army community. 

Her photography has been shared on Facebook over 3.5 million times and featured in Vanity Fair, USA Today, Parents, SELF Magazine, The Huffington Post, Time Magazine, as well as in hundreds of international publications. Cosmopolitan magazine has called her work “stunning,” “powerful,” and notes that her work caused “the internet to lose its collective mind.” The Gulf Coast Breastfeeding Center reported, “Tara Ruby is to breastfeeding as Ansel Adams was to landscape.” She was a finalist in Ron Howard’s Project Imaginat10n contest, has images in the full-feature documentary Homecoming The Film, and has her image displayed in the US Army Women’s museum in Fort Lee, VA. 

Tara is a graduate of the New York Institute of Photography, holds both her Master Photographer and her Craftsman degree with PPA as well as holding an Associate’s title with WPPI. 

When she is not behind the camera, you will find her working out in the gym or working at her small homestead, Ruby Roost & Ranch, where she raises poultry, goats, and pigs with her family.