Vega's Gorgeous Pregnancy Photos

There is a magic that happens to us as photographers when everything comes together at once in perfect synchronicity....the ethereal light converges with  perfect softness and vibrant color....and we are connected with the people we're photographing in that moment in time and space in complete perfection.

It's something that we aspire to everytime we shoot and feel incredibly blessed when we achieve. It's a sense of ecstasy that is captured in mere seconds but immortalized forever.

I had all of these feelings throughout my entire shoot with Vega....our lighting and venue were perfect and we worked together and understood each other perfectly. She was willing to trust my vision while also having an empowered and liberating sense of herself and her body. She has a femininity and electric magnetism that translates so well through the lens. It was an absolute joy to co-create this shoot together!

She was fearless and open to trying just about everything we both could come up during the time we had. One of my specialties and favorite types of photography is Goddess Photography in which I celebrate women of all shapes, sizes, and ages throughout the various stages of our lives. What more amazing way to celebrate Vega's "Goddess-ness"than to celebrate her body's ability to create life and to watch her transition from Woman to Mother.

I have to add that there has been more serendipity involved between Vega and me than this shoot. We met around twelve years ago through mutual friends and had such an unforgettable conversation I never forgot about her. It was the time before Facebook and social media and cell phones were just beginning to be used and we either lost contact info for each other or never asked for it. I never forgot her and always wondered if she still lived in Santa Barbara. There are many people we meet throughout our lives and never forget and Vega was one of them. Over the years I wondered where she was and if I would ever see her again.

Fast forward to a few months ago when I was shooting an event with Association For Women In Communication and there she was again....twelve years later. I was so excited to reconnect with her and was happy to know she hadn't forgotten me either. I didn't realize it at the time that she was pregnant and was overjoyed when she asked me to be her photographer for the final leg of her pregnancy.

Life has a funny way of connecting us at just the right moments. I so look forward to seeing Vega become the amazing Mother that I know she will be....and I definitely hope I have the opportunity to continue photographing her throughout her Motherhood.

Wishing her a sublime and beautiful birthing experience!

Life is truly magical.

*Please make sure to check out the slideshow I posted below of our shoot together. There's a comment thread below as well~

*If the music doesn't come on at first, please refresh your window/browser and click "play" again. Enjoy!

Goddess Pregnancy Photos

by rsthurston photography

*Feel free to leave comments below the slideshow~

September 20th, 2011

"To be pregnant is to be vitally alive, thoroughly woman, and undoubtedly inhabited."

Anne Buchanan & Debra Klingsporn

It's crazy to think that not only are some of my oldest and dearest Santa Barbara girlfriends now married and with kids but a few of them are on their second and third little ones. It's a beautiful thing to watch a fellow woman grow from who she was as a single entity to growing into a wife and mother. My dear friend (who wishes to remain unnamed but is pleased to share these artful images with others) has been in my life since the first year I moved to Santa Barbara. I was fresh off the river from years of living in a tent...my Chevy Blazer packed to the gills with most of my living possessions.

She had just moved here from Oregon and was beginning an equally exciting adventure and chapter in her life.Those were the days when we didn't know the difference from the Eastside and the Westside or the Riviera from the Mesa. We were just happy to have a roof over our heads and a little piece of green out our backdoors. I lived off of plastic plates and ate on a coffee table stitched together from plywood and bricks for the first year. My girlfriend "G" and I paddled outrigger together, partied with sailors, went to music festivals, and lived the free-spirited lifestyle of 20-something women unfettered by commitment, mortgages, or a biological clock.

In short, them were some fun days...

I look now at how much our lives have changed. I definitely couldn't fit all that I own into an SUV anymore and I'm a lot pickier about the plates I eat off of and the neighborhood I live in. She's married now to a sweet engineer with a Midwestern raising and taste for travel and good art. They're on their third child now but seem to maintain a closeness with each other as if they were just entering their first year of marriage together.

While we both acknowledge the incredible times we had here during the "good ole days," I doubt either one of us would trade where we're at now. I've discovered a serenity and blissfulness here in Santa Barbara that I never knew when I was moving every three months and living out of tupperware.

And my girlfriend has grown into this amazing, radiant, calm, and collected wise, sexy wife and mother. To see the woman who I once danced on bartops with and lost at a music festival in the High Sierras becoming this pregnant goddess is truly an unimaginable transition yet it just feels right. Girlfriends like her are blazing the way for me in the next chapter of my life...

We're blessed to be the women that we are. And as the old saying goes...."You can never step in the same river twice." But why should we? It's a magnificent, heart-wrenching, and beautiful journey this life of ours....and I wouldn't trade any of it.

The adventure of motherhood awaits....

We had fantastic timing, by the way, with this shoot. "G" gave birth only a week after these photos were taken....her precious little one was born on a Sunday morning...hence the title of the soundtrack I chose by Maroon 5 which I thought fit the mood purrfectly....Enjoy!