Every expecting mother has a checklist. Her and her partner keep track of every step in the pre-birth process. The mother’s checklist includes her change of clothes, snacks, babysitting arrangements, and for some mothers, her birth photographer. When these mothers arrive at the hospital, life is brought into the world with a blink of an eye, and a click of a camera.
A common birth photography misconception is that birth photography is akin to medical photography. Because of this, there is often a negative stigma surrounding birth photography. However, Ashley Diamond Seigert, is redefining birth photography by capturing the emotions and reactions during birth. Seigert, owner of Fig-Mint Photography, has been a birth photographer for about five years. She says her number one priority is capturing the birthing story and educating people that birth photography exists.
Seigert shoots with two different cameras metered for different lighting. She says she is in the photojournalism world, working with the light the hospital room will give her. She moves freely about the room scrubbed in with her two cameras swinging on her hips, making sure she gets the entire family’s reaction.
A large portion of her business is focused on interpersonal communication between her clients, the parents. Seigert says creating a relationship with the mother’s partner is very important because she wants the partner to be present in the moment without having to worry about capturing it.
“The biggest benefit that I’ve seen come out of it is that there’s so much adrenaline coming out during birth that it’s very difficult to remember a lot of the things that happen throughout the day,” Seigert says. “It’s very difficult to focus on the emotion of your family and focus on the look of your partners’ face when they meet their baby for the first time, because you’re preoccupied. So, for a lot of my clients it’s been very healing because they’ve been able to go back and kind of piece everything together and also be able to give them a different perspective than the one that they had.”
Trust is another important factor for Seigert. With the intimate nature of her job, establishing trust immediately with the clients makes the entire process go smoothly. Seigert always consults with the parents face-to-face to get to know them and create a plan that best suits their needs.
One of Seigert’s most impactful moments in her career was a client who had an emergency C-section. It was so sudden that they had to put the mother under anesthesia and the mother missed the entire birth. However, Seigert was able to capture the dad’s first moments with the new baby and the first bath despite the complication. The mother in turn was able to live out some of the experience she had missed.
According to Seigert, the mother said, “You know, it was traumatic and having those images to look back on pieced together the things that I missed made it so much easier to heal from that trauma because I don’t feel like I missed everything.”
The future of birth photography is undergoing a huge shift. Instagram recently changed its policy, which previously banned medical birth photos, Seigert says. Although Seigert does not post the more intimate images, this is a moment in history for mothers to share their stories and experiences. With this new policy change people will be able to spread awareness of birth photography and give insight to those who did not know it is an option.
For more information on Seigert’s services and to see more examples of her work, visit www.Fig-Mint.com.
