I am in LA

I am in LA. Whenever I come to LA, it always takes me a day to get settled, to remember I am in LA. It isn't that I don’t like LA, it is just that I have to mentally adjust to LA. I have to mentally adjust to NY, Seattle and SF but I go there more frequently so it is a quicker adjustment.

Joelle, my studio manager, is here with me. She keeps me sane when I have big parties or openings because she keeps everything organized so I can basically talk to people and make sure I answer questions for the media and sign books and actually be present at these parties.

Our day started at Freestyle where I am having my opening tomorrow night from 5:30-7:30 at their Creative Center for Photography. I am on their advisory board for maternity photography. Their website says “Our Advisory Board is comprised of some of the most talented and influential professionals in the Photographic Industry. They share Freestyle's passion for the advancement of the creative photographic process. Together with Freestyle, we are committed to offering you only the best in products, expertise and customer service. We also offer "Ask The Experts", a unique opportunity to get answers to your questions from the foremost experts in the industry!” This is a huge resource for photographers trying to learn about anything. Plus I like them because they are still very committed to film, which is what I shoot.

We arrived to check out their idea for displaying my photographs. We had come up with a diagram, but Michael did such a great job of arranging the work we decided to go with his suggestions.

I have to say I NEVER thought in all my years of doing maternity photography that we would actually be in gallery shows. Ten years ago when I really started to commit myself to bringing this work in to the public eye, it was a struggle. Now we have had five different book launch parties/shows in four cities, and all of them have been packed with people. The book “Portraits of Pregnancy: The Birth of a Mother” which has no real marketing budget continues to amaze me on Amazon. It pops in and out of the top hundred in Womens Studies/Motherhood.



There are some inspiring stories of inner transformation in my book and I hope, hope, hope that it will get read by Oprah or her crew. I heard she doesn’t do much on pregnancy, but these stories are about finding hope in the darkest hour, gleaning support from your partner, and finding the inner strength to continue to pursue your dream. Pregnancy may be the conduit, but the stories are much deeper allegories for living your dreams, finding your passion, and overcoming challenges, and realizing that some times your deepest fears or frustrations are actually better teachers than you can ever imagine leading you to a happiness that you never thought possible.

Making photography a priority in these times

Yesterday I had the pleasure of photographing return clients, Zach and Vanessa and their two children in my Seattle Studio. I photographed Vanessa pregnant with their first, and then photographed the three of them once the baby came. The photographs were beautiful and they hang all over their house.

Vanessa got pregnant with her second right in the midst of the recession when everything went to hell. Zach was a mortgage broker, a very successful one, but even he was feeling the squeeze. So they decided not to have maternity portraits for the second baby. Vanessa was devastated but understood. After the baby was born, they wanted to have family photographs taken. Vanessa kept saying, "Zach we have to go back to Jennifer," because their gallery of photographs didn't contain the new baby. But they held back. A friend of theirs who was a photographer gave them a gift of some pictures.

"They were fine," said Vanessa, "but they just weren't the same, you know?"

Vanessa whispered, "Zach said to me, we really need to go back to Jennifer. It isn't fair to Madison if she doesn't have great photos of her. There really is a difference." Vanessa told me this story because she said she wanted me to know that Zach realized how important it was to have me capture this time in their children's lives and how you can't get back those years. She told me how Zach realized that taking photography of your children is a priority. Zach walked in and sat down in the living room of my studio and said "yes, your photography is a total priority. You don't have to order $3000 worth of prints now. We can always come back later, but at least you have the photography done and the kids captured."

This is an important point. If you don't have the money to order prints now you can later. We archive your images forever. I store your negatives in archival sleeves which are in archival envelopes. And we do see many parents calling in for new orders months even years later. Until I heard Zach say this, I never though about it, but yes you can always order prints. Just take the photos. Just take the photos. You won't regret it. This is a brief and fleeting time in your or your child's life.

Thanks Vanessa and Zach for telling me that story.

San Francisco Book Launch Party

Our San Francisco book launch party was a huge success. I had pregnant moms as well as clients who I photographed over 5 years ago show up. It was a beautiful day and the BBQ was smoking with salmon burgers, hamburgers and hot dogs. The kids were running around and playing and everyone was meeting new people. I think this party had the highest number of previous clients which was great! Photos will be posted soon (once Joelle downloads them). The reading was a special event, three of the women featured in the book read excerpts from their stories. At one point I took over for a mom who was so choked up, she couldn't read. Everyone was crying. It just made me realize how special a book this is, and how these women poured their hearts into each story to help other women come to terms with their own pregnancies. It was an inspiring as well as emotional day. Great job Hugo for writing such lovely stories.

I just checked our Amazon book rank (yes it changes every hour but..!!), we are officially ranked! This is exciting, very exciting!

# Amazon.com Sales Rank: #35,620 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Popular in this category: (What's this?)
#60 in Books > Nonfiction > Women's Studies > Motherhood

I have two shoots today so I can't write much more because I am waiting for my second client to arrive. But my first client, wow! What an amazing mom. She and her husband met when she took a trapeze class. He was her spotter. Isn't that a unique and interesting story? They have the cutest 4 month old.

Part of me - South Dakota

I am sitting in my San Francisco studio. I love it here. The studio has tall ceilings and large exposed beams that are from the original carriage house before it was remodeled. The floors are hardwood and the entire west wall is windows that look out onto a little garden area with a fountain. Although it is located on a very busy street, my studio is set back off the street, behind two old fashioned barn doors and through the garden area so that I don’t hear the traffic. My landlord, Judy, is an amazing politically active woman who has made this community of apartments and studios her art project. She is hand tiled a mosaic on the concrete retaining wall, and most of the plants in the garden she rescued from some throw-away bin. There are also funky artifacts hanging around like the candle arbre that housed a hummingbird next last summer. The garden has become a green oasis in the city and is teeming with hummingbirds, doves, and of course pigeons. It is my oasis. Outside can get a bit nuts, but once I come in here I can sit and relax. And it is a great space for making photographs of pregnant women and their children. My clients and their children come here and immediate sit down and relax. The children love the garden, the fish in the fountain and the hummingbirds.


Today is Friday. I arrived in SF yesterday after being in South Dakota (see my blog jenniferloomis.blogspot.com) taking care of my father. He had his shoulder replaced at the Mayo Clinic and needed us to be there to drive him home as well as get him accustomed to living with only one arm while the other healed. It was great to be with him and to support him during this time. Before the operation, he said he could handle it on his own, after the operation he realized he was wrong and thanked us profusely. Watching my father immobilized and in so much pain, was difficult. He is 70 and for the first time I realized that he is getting older and sooner or later, he won’t be able to live in the middle of nowhere in South Dakota by himself.


My sister and I drove him back to his home on Monday the 1st of June. I was exhausted. I had stayed up with him the entire night after the surgery to make sure he was OK. He was frightened and very glad I stayed. He never asked me to stay, he just said. “you sure you are going to be OK staying here tonight, Ja?” That’s what he has always called me, Ja.

Arriving in South Dakota, was like walking back into a time warp. He has lived there 30 years and when it hadn’t changed since I was a kid. I used to LIVE to go to South Dakota in the summers. I loved the country; I loved my horse and riding her all over, racing pick-up trucks on the hard dirt roads. The small town – before Walmart moved in 2 hours away – was a vibrant community, and was a source of unending fascination for me, I went to 4H events, rodeos, raised chickens, rabbits, calves, fawns, you name the animal I raised it. My father also worked with the Ogala Sioux tribe, now called the Lakota, and so we went to many powwows, sweats, and other rituals and ceremonies (deemed illegal by the US government) often being the only nonnatives there. I had dark hair and dark eyes but didn’t look Indian, but at least I didn’t stand out like my blond sister. We were the minority there and Dad taught us to respect the customs, to have a low profile and observe how to behave. I remember going to sleep at night listening to the singers playing their drums and singing late into the night. When I had to leave South Dakota, I would cry inconsolably. Life felt so unfair.

The town of Martin has 1100 people. There are more pheasants than people and definitely more cows. Another five days was spent here, nursing him back to health and basically cleaning out his cupboards of expired canned goods. At the end of it, I was going a little nuts and was ready to leave and head back to my cities, Seattle, SF and NY.


As I sit here in my SF studio writing this, staring out the window at the fig tree, I am grateful for all of my South Dakota summers and the experiences I had growing up. They made me a better person by contributing to my wanderlust spirit (which has taken me to Japan, Mongolia, Africa and countless other places), giving me a thirst for new cultures, and developed my ability to interface with all kinds of people and feel comfortable in any situation. It is part of what makes me do good work and why I love photographing so much.

“Finding Hope After Miscarriage”

This is one of the stories that didn't make it into my book

Angy Merola’s first attempt at motherhood resulted in an ectopic pregnancy, discovered only after much damage was done to one of her fallopian tubes. Her chances of becoming pregnant again were now, in theory, cut in half. That’s how she began a four-year journey filled with heartbreak and struggle, including two failed attempts at in-vitro fertilization, until finally, when she least expected it, after two consecutive miscarriages, her son Nico was born.

My husband and I had just gotten off a plane and were about to start a two-week French vacation when I had to go to the hospital. I knew what had happened because it had happened before about eight months earlier around Christmas.

Now it was the end of September. I knew something was wrong during the flight so I had called my doctor during my layover in New York. We immediately went to the local hospital in Burgundy and partly because of the language barrier, it took a little time and a lot of tests before they confirmed what I was trying to tell them, that yes I was pregnant, and yes I had miscarried. It was not the way we imagined starting our vacation.

I just stayed in my hotel room and cried. I wouldn’t leave that room. My husband asked me if I wanted to go home. I told him that I did. He didn’t say anything. By then we were at the beach near Nice and Monaco. He just let me cry, and a little while later he suggested we take a walk on the beach.

Getting out of the hotel room, enjoying where we were, not thinking about everything, just for a little while helped a lot. It made me think leaving might be hasty. I thought, “ok, you can’t let this completely consume you and ruin your entire vacation.” So we stayed.

I’m really glad we did.

Tony and I met in the spring of 1993. I was a sophomore and he was a junior in college. After a week of dating, we both knew we would get married someday. Neither of us questioned the feeling. We got engaged three years later and married two years after that.

We really have a perfect marriage. We love every minute of it. He’s my best friend. We see eye to eye. We travel together. We have two dogs and we both want kids.

For some reason, I told him that I secretly feared that it would not be easy for us to have them. I had no reason to feel that way and I don’t know why I said it. Tony would just say, “Angy don’t talk like that. We’re both healthy. We have nothing to worry about.” He just didn’t want to engage in that conversation.

He was right. I had no reason to worry. It wasn’t because my mom had any trouble getting pregnant. She was 18 when I was born. Maybe it’s because every woman has that fear. I’ve talked to other girlfriends who have thought the same thing. As a woman you feel like you were born to have babies. And if you can’t, you wonder if you can call yourself a true woman, no matter how confident, no matter how strong you are.

It seemed easy at first. I got pregnant the first time we tried. An ectopic pregnancy can happen to anyone at any age. By the time it was discovered, my entire fallopian tube had ruptured. I was bleeding internally. I needed emergency surgery in the middle of the night. They had to remove the entire tube. I knew then my chances of getting pregnant again were cut in half. But my doctor told me I could still get pregnant, that it might just take longer.

We tried for more than three years. The first year, we tried using Clomid, a fertility drug, and once tried artificial insemination. In the second year we discovered I had elevated levels of a hormone that affected my ability to get pregnant. It was as if I had the body of someone who was 41, not 31.

That’s when we tried in-vitro fertilization. We spent about $20,000 on two rounds of in-vitro, six months apart. We were reassured we had a good chance of getting pregnant but both times it failed. And my doctor, to this day, can’t explain it. I learned one factor that can’t be measured is how stress can impact a pregnancy.

A few months after the two rounds of in-vitro failed, I unexpectedly got pregnant on my own in the fall of 2005. I had been going through something of a professional crisis and doing a lot of soul-searching. I was completely focused on my career and completely miserable at the same time. So I decided to quit my job at the end of November. Three days before I was going to give notice, I found out I was pregnant. Now I had even more reason to quit. But our happiness ended quickly. When I was seven weeks pregnant, I miscarried.

This was the darkest part of our entire journey. I felt like I might not be able to bounce back to normal. And, honestly, I never really did go back to the way I was. I became a much more skeptical, serious person who was really struggling with "why me?" each and every day. I really felt like a failure.

I often wished I could let it go. I wondered, “why am I so consumed with getting pregnant? Why couldn’t I just roll with it? Why am I so fixated?” My husband was as supportive as anyone could be. He had reassured me over and over that he married me, and that’s what our relationship was about, that it didn’t really matter to him if we didn’t have kids. He just wanted us to be the way we were before, but of course that was completely impossible. Too many things had happened on that long road.

Nine months later, I somehow got pregnant again without any treatment. And again it ended in miscarriage while we were on vacation. So there we were on the French Riviera. I started to think, “wait a second, we’ve been planning this trip for so long. Is this what I want, to sit here feeling bad? Is that fair to Tony?” At some point it became harder to not leave the room. There were so many things to see and do. So we took a walk on the beach and that helped to snap me out of it. Something about being by the water has always had a special effect on me.

That week, against the odds, I got pregnant for the third time in one year. There was no reason I should have gotten pregnant. I wasn’t even interested in trying again –the thought was too painful. I was scared to death of having another miscarriage. Getting pregnant this time was not joyful – it was petrifying. Once we made it through the first trimester, it set in that we were going to be parents. It was then that I promised myself to enjoy every single second of the pregnancy, even when I felt like a whale, even when I was constantly nauseous, even when I was in 50 hours of labor. We had many close friends and family use the word “miracle” when we told them we were expecting. The pregnancy really did feel miraculous.

If we get the opportunity to have another child, that would be great. If we don’t, that’s fine too. Having Nico brings us both so much joy and happiness. The pregnancy was amazing. But being parents has brought us enough happiness to last the rest of our lives.


For more stories about pregnancy and birth, check out my new book, Portraits of Pregnancy: The Birth of a Mother available-signed- from our website www.jenniferloomis.com or from Amazon

OR

We also have amazing stories on our website under "Our Mothers' Stories." Tell us your story. Please send it to info@jenniferloomis.com