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Confession: I am a patternaholic. This is a real thing. Aside from leggings, tights and one black t-shirt dress, I straight up do not understand a world where one wears a solid color. Throughout my pregnancy, I’ve taken a different approach to pregnancy style and have continued to wear my brightest and boldest patterned dresses — thankfully these pieces happen to all be on the stretchy end of the spectrum. So, I decided to take the same approach to my maternity photos. Patterns on patterns on bump. Let the bumptastic games begin.
I teamed up with our badass babe photographer Brittany Griffin to make my pattern-obsessed dreams a reality. It started as a one-off. I wondered aloud if we could superimpose the pattern of my dress onto the backdrop of a photo. And luckily, the Photoshop gods said “oh HELL yes.”
Voila, a maternity photo series dream was born.
First, THE SHOOT:
1. Pull all your patterned dresses together.
2. Arrange them in rainbow order. (Steam any wrinkles out!)
3. Take photos of each dress on its own. Hold it so that you don’t have any gathers or wrinkles — this will end up being the backdrop for your photos.
4. Get ready for your close-up! Take photos of yourself in each dress on a plain white background. (Pro tip: Try to vary your facial expressions and position so that you don’t accidentally look like a robot.)
Next, EDITING:
This is where Photoshop comes in HARDCORE. If you don’t have the skills yourself, enlist a friend. If you don’t have a ‘shop-savvy friend, you can actually outsource the toughest part!
1. Crop photos of each dress on its own so that it appears to be an all-over patterned background.
2. Use Photoshop to “clip” photos of yourself in each dress. This means basically cutting yourself out of the background of the photo so that you can insert the patterned background. This is where some outside help can come in. There are lots of “clipping services” available on the internet; do some Googling and you should be able to send them out for clipping.
3. Layer the clipped photos of you onto the corresponding patterns. Done and done!!
Now, let’s BUMP the rainbow. Scroll on to see all 36 dresses we pattern-on-patterned. And if you’ve got creative maternity photos that we should check out, send ‘em our way via Twitter, Facebook or Instagram @britandco. You can follow my last couple months of bump photos on Instagram @anjelikatemple, more specifically #onebrownbump ;)
OMG you made it all the way down here? Well scrolled, fellow pattern-lover.
Photography: Brittany Griffin
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