I taught photography at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts when I lived in Michigan. One of my favorite field trips was to take my classes to the Episcopal Cathedral, even if it was a nature photography class.

A cathedral might seem to be a strange place to take a nature photography class, but it was a nice, warm inside place to go when the weather outside was inhospitable. But the real reason for going, even in nice weather, was the cathedral is a great place to practice creative expression and work with colors and shapes and forms.

Many of the students thought it was a strange place to go, at least until they got there. By the end of the three hour field trip everyone realized it was a great place to take pictures.

The cathedral has brick walls and one of the cool things about the cathedral is many of the bricks are colored glass. In every direction you look, light is coming into the sanctuary through the glass bricks.

On the rostrum there were large, round glass candles. Inside each candle there is a round glass ball to hold the oil with a glass tube to the outside of the candle for the wick. By doing a closeup of the candle I could get relatively in focus reflections of the colored bricks in the glass ball and very out of focus reflections in the outer glass wall of the candle.

This is one of my two most favorite images for this date.

Selina is a model who contacted me with two photo shoot requests. She wanted me to photograph her pregnant, and to photograph the birth of her son. I jumped at the chance to do both.

One of the most beautiful things on the planet is a pregnant woman, which is one of the reasons “baby bump” photography is so popular. Selina wanted some creative images. One of the things I did was to have her stand behind some gauzy material with a bit of a pattern and I back lit her with studio lights. I made the exposure light enough so the light wrapped around her. I didn’t want a plain black silhouette. We tried a variety of poses and this is the one we both liked best.

This is my other favorite image for this date, and one of my all time favorite photos of a pregnant woman.

In case you are wondering, her baby boy was born just five days after this photo shoot. You will see a photo when I post my favorite image for March 4.

Link

Series: Favorite Photos by Date – all about this series

Favorite Photo, March 4 – the birth of Selina’s baby boy