Frozen in time: capturing early life moments

By Lisa

Whenever Carly Rider looks at one particular photo on her bedroom wall, she is so grateful that such an important moment is frozen in time, allowing her to reflect on it anytime she wants.

The photo is an image of Carly and her husband, Andy, sitting in a birthing tub, meeting their son, Conner, for the very first time. It's something Carly said she probably wouldn't have if she hadn't decided to join an increasingly popular trend of hiring a professional to photograph her child's birth.

Andy and Carly Rider hold their son, Conner, moments after he was born. The image was captured thanks to their birth photographer, Rachael Steele.

"If we had a family member they might have been crying or too busy to take that picture," Carly said.

That's not the attitude she had, however, when she first heard of the idea of bringing a photographer on as a member of her birth team.

"I was thinking, 'no way.' I'm a very private person. I didn't want other people to be there while I was giving birth," Carly said.

But after seeing the kinds of pictures Rachael Steele, birth photographer, was able to capture, and the tasteful way in which the subjects were portrayed, Carly decided to give it a try and she has never been sorry.

It's a sentiment many of Steele's birth photography clients share.

"They only take their first breath once," Steele said, comparing the concept of birth photography to the wedding photo industry. "Your wedding is important but the birth of this one particular child will never happen again. The only way you can capture their first breath and your first moment becoming a parent is by having a professional photographer there."

Cassidy Miller, a lifestyle family photographer in Southern Utah, has been focusing on birth photography since it first started gaining popularity in the area. Both Miller and Steele photograph births in the hospital, the home or in a birth center, taking a "photo journalistic approach" to telling the story from beginning to end.

"It's definitely different than other kinds of sessions," Miller said of the effort she has put into the technical training required for this kind of shoot.

Unlike some of her family photo sessions and other photography work, Miller said she has no control over some of the key elements of a birth, including the lighting, the location, the time of day or even how long the session will last.

"It adds an element of difficulty to the technicality of the shoot on my part; that's what I love about it," Miller said.

Because babies tend to arrive on their own time schedule, both Miller and Steele put themselves on call for each client two weeks before and two weeks after the baby's due date; meaning they don't go out of town, they never turn their cell phones off and they have backup childcare arranged for their own families so they can be to the birth location as soon as they get the call.

In the beginning, Steele said many of her birth photography sessions took place in people's homes. However, the trend has shifted in her business and the number of hospital births to home births that she photographs is around 7-to-3.

Jeremy and Lyndsey Swindlehurst meet their baby for the first time in a moment captured by birth photographer Rachael Steele.

For Miller, her clientele was once heavy on the hospital birth side of things, and now it's kind of evened out to include more home birth shoots.

Either way, the key is to capture the moments and tell the entire birth story from check-in to first breath and beyond.

"The shots I get are not graphic at all," Miller said. "It's typically a very modest shoot."

Some of the popular shots from birth photo sessions include mom's labor, baby's entrance into the world, dad's first interaction with baby, the first bath, skin-to-skin time with mom, the time of birth, first family bonding, as well as ambient shots like dad's energy drink or mom's lip balm.

"I want to freeze moments in time. You always think you're going to remember and you just don't," Steele said.

Plus, the photographers typically try to follow dad and baby during the first moments of cleaning and bathing — moments mom doesn't always get to see.

"Birth is such a huge part of your life. If you've ever given birth you understand the magnitude of that," Miller said. "It's no question why (birth photography) has caught on and is gaining popularity."

To find out more about the birth photographers in this story, go to and

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