Underwater Bellies

What started out as a crazy dream actually became possible, thanks to my wonderful husband Curtis and his DIY talents! About a month ago we were talking about creative endeavors for the future and since I have been photographing a lot of Maternity portraits lately I started thinking about photographing bellies underwater.

Right away I googled "underwater maternity photography" to get some ideas and came across the most awesome blog post. These images make me want to be pregnant in the summer JUST so I can have shots like these!

The first step was figuring out how to get the high quality images we're used to from our D3's while being underwater and without shelling out $3000+ for a waterproof housing unit.

So we did some tests, well a lot actually! First we tried a disposable underwater film camera. This test proved that the poses we had in mind would look cool and that we could hold our breath and shoot at the same time. Great! However the camera sucked big time and we had no control over the developing process, so it obviously wasn't an option. We determined that we definitely wanted to use our gear but had no idea how we were going to submerge a $5000 camera underwater without something going horribly wrong. So Curtis came up with a genius, yet simple, idea:





Yeah, that's glorified Tupperware. Now the question was how to release the shutter without having my hands inside the container. In comes a wireless shutter release remote to the rescue! We originally got the remote so we could take more photos of ourselves without having to run back and forth to the camera.

After many, many tests to make sure it was completely waterproof we took the plunge and tested it out in an actual pool. After getting over the initial submersion-trepidation and getting comfortable shooting while wearing goggles and a nose plug we scheduled some real sessions.

Check out some of my favorite images from the underwater belly portraits:

























Thank you to Janet & Dawn for giving their time for this fun, learning experience. I only wish I had more time this summer to shoot more of these. Oh well, there's always next summer!


Emily Snyder
Kismet Photography

Ahhh the Facebook love!

Unfortunately we have zero time to post some of the awesome new things we've been doing, much less some of the many weddings and engagement shoots that are waaaay past due. But we do have a quick sec and thought we'd share some of the great things folks are saying about the images we are posting on Facebook. By the way, that's where to go to see all the new stuff as it's posted there first. So go ahead, click on over to our Facebook fan page and "Like" us to see the latest and greatest Kismet imagery. Back to the post at hand...Not many people leave comments on this blog (even though hundreds of people are reading it as evidenced by our web stats) but our Facebook fans and friends of fans are quick to show some love. Check out all the raves one of our couples, the undeniably awesome and fashion-forward Shannon and David, got for their engagement sneak peek we posted. (Names have been blurred to protect the innocent)



As if that wasn't enough of an ego boost for us, the lovely Shannon posted this recently to our fan page:




Doesn't that just make you feel all warm and gooey inside? Well it does for us! A special thanks to everyone who has ever and will ever say nice things about us and our work either to our face or on some form of media or whatever. It's that praise and acknowledgment that lets us know we are accomplishing our number one goal: Make people happy through photography.


With love & thanks,

Curtis & Emily
Kismet Photography