Holly + Hailey | Toronto Beach Maternity Session

Photographing pregnancy always feels meaningful, but photographing this chapter for people I know and love carries a little extra weight.

Holly and Hailey are friends of mine, which made getting to document them as they prepared to welcome their baby especially special. We spent a beautiful late-summer day together in Toronto, beginning around the architecture of the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant before making our way down to the beach along Lake Ontario.

It was simple, intimate, playful—and such a lovely reflection of the two of them in this moment of their lives.

A Toronto Maternity Session by the Lake

One of the reasons I love photographing maternity sessions outdoors is that there is room for the experience to unfold naturally.

We can walk. Explore. Stop when the light is beautiful. Sit together beneath a tree. Take off our shoes and wander into the water.

There doesn't need to be a constant sequence of maternity “poses.”

For Holly and Hailey, I wanted to make photographs that celebrated Holly's pregnancy while also documenting their relationship and the experience of waiting for their baby together.

So much of pregnancy photography understandably focuses on the pregnant person and their changing body. And that absolutely deserves to be celebrated.

But when I'm photographing a couple, I'm also interested in everything happening around that pregnancy: the tenderness between two people, the anticipation, the ways they reach for each other, the laughter, and the quiet realization that their relationship is about to expand into something new.

Maternity Photos at R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant

The R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant is one of my favourite places to photograph in Toronto's east end because it gives us two completely different environments within one session.

Its dramatic architecture, stonework and landscaped grounds create a beautiful backdrop for portraits, while just beyond it, Lake Ontario offers something much softer and more organic.

That variety means we can create photographs that feel intentional without making the session itself feel overly structured.

And then we can head toward the water, take our shoes off and let things get a little less polished.

Which is usually when some of my favourite photographs happen.

Barefoot, Sandy + In the Water

By the time we reached the beach, Holly and Hailey were barefoot and walking together along the shoreline.

There was wind coming off the lake, waves rolling in, long shadows stretching across the sand and that beautiful late-summer light that begins to hint at fall.

Eventually, they stepped right into the water.

This is the kind of environment I love photographing people in because it introduces an element none of us can completely control. A wave comes farther up the beach than expected. Someone gets splashed. You grab your partner's hand. You laugh.

Suddenly you're not thinking quite as much about having your photograph taken.

You're just there together.

Photographing Friends

Being behind the camera gives me access to remarkably intimate chapters in people's lives.

Pregnancies. Weddings. New babies. Families changing and growing. Relationships evolving over years.

When the people in front of my camera are also my friends, I'm especially aware of what a privilege that is.

I already know Holly and Hailey beyond the boundaries of a photography session. I care about them and the family they're creating. I know that the baby Holly is carrying in these photographs will soon become a whole person I get to know, too.

It makes these images feel a little different to me.

I'm not only creating a maternity gallery for clients. I'm preserving a piece of my friends' history.

Before You Meet Them

Pregnancy is such a strange and fleeting chapter.

For months, your baby is already profoundly part of your life—and yet you haven't met them.

You're imagining them. Talking about them. Preparing your home for them. Making decisions for them. Watching a body change because of them.

You're becoming parents before you ever get to hold them.

And then one day they're here, and the version of your family that existed in these photographs is gone.

That's why I think maternity photographs become more valuable with time.

They let you return to the before.

Before you knew their face. Before you knew their personality. Before you knew what their laugh sounded like or how they'd fit into your arms.

For Holly and Hailey, these photographs hold a little piece of that before: two people walking barefoot along a Toronto beach, holding hands, laughing, getting splashed by Lake Ontario and waiting to meet someone they already loved.

Getting to preserve it for my friends made this session all the more meaningful.

Looking for a maternity photographer in Toronto? I photograph pregnancy, couples and families with a candid, documentary-inspired approach centred on connection, changing bodies and the beautifully human experience of growing a family.

If you're expecting and want to document this fleeting chapter in a way that feels natural, connected and genuinely like you, I'd love to hear from you. Get in touch and tell me a little about your family and what you'd like to remember.