It was a few weeks past my daughter’s 6-month birthday and I had not made any plans to have professional pictures taken. Like most moms, I snap A LOT of pictures throughout the week, but half the time they turn out fuzzy, I don’t catch her cute expressions or she has dried spit-up crusted on her clothes. Not to mention, most of said photos are on my phone or my little point-and-shoot camera (I have not yet graduated to a big girl camera (DSLR) that I lust after).
Feeling this adorable, smiley, sitting-but-not-crawling, interested-in-everything age slipping away, and wanting to commemorate her recent baptism, I made an appointment at the photo studio at our local mall. You know the ones: they herd you through in 20-minute appointments in “studios” that are open to the mall, then you wait to see your proofs on the monitors and purchase prints in “sheets.” I didn’t have high expectations, but I figured even if they turned out badly, at least I’d have them to laugh about and teasing material for her wedding day.
I have beautiful photos that were taken of my son at 6 months (he was my first baby and the appointment with the expensive photographer was made weeks in advance), in most of which, he is wearing a diaper only or nothing at all. I love the simplicity of them, so I wanted to try and recreate that look for my daughter’s pictures. Only this time, I had the added motivation of wanting to get some of her in her cute cloth diapers. Instead of trying to hide the ugliness of the disposables that my son wore for his shoot two years ago, I was excited to have her photographed showing off her fluffy bum.
As I could have predicted, the photo session was rushed and my three-year-old was not as cooperative as he could have been, but my daughter’s diaper was the talk of the studio. Our photographer was gushing loudly about how cute the diaper was, a mom waiting to see her proofs was very interested in learning about cloth diapers and another photographer came over to see what was so exciting in Studio 1. Cool! I swear, every day presents another opportunity to build awareness about cloth diapering. And the upshot? We got some fantastic pictures for not a lot of money. So, drum roll please… here are some of the results:
We did get some of her without her diaper as well (and some with clothes on too – ha!), but I actually like the diapered ones better. Looking back, I do sort of wish I would have chosen one of my favorite FuzziBunz colors instead of the white (she’s in her white FuzziBunz One-Size, which I actually just purchased the week before because we had no white). It’s very classic and simple, which is what I wanted, and I didn’t want anything to show through her white baptism dress, but how cute would it have been to get these same photos with a Mac ‘n Cheese or Crushed Berries? How sweet to have her in Cotton Candy or Mint? And how sophisticated to have her in Choco Truffle? Maybe I’ll go back for a ‘diapers only’ photo shoot –wouldn’t that be fun!?
Either way, it was a fun experience and I’m so glad I got such great photos to add to our walls and family history book!
Sarah is a mom of two and blogs about her adventures in motherhood, cloth diapering and everything in between. Catch her “Cloth Diapering Unwrapped” series on the FuzziBunz blog every Tuesday.
