Parachute Dress – the making

I have beeen wanting to make more of my outdoor maternity shoots for a while now as I just love the colours and compositions you can get when outdoors but the maternity shoot is something I generally do in the studio.

So when I descovered Alice Andrews Design and did a further search for maternity shoots using parachute dresses I was thrilled to see that as far as I am aware there is no one doing these shoots currently.  There are plenty of outdoor maternity photographers who are brilliant at what they do but rather than use the same dresses, I wanted to stand out with something really special.  I asked Alice to create a brand new dress using the colours I wanted and she was thrilled.

Alice uses natural dies, in this case avocado walnut and logwood, to create a dusty pink dress from chiffon and a real parachute for the detachable skirt.

I was so excited when I received the dress in the post, but I had to wait until the weather gave me a window to work with.  It’s been one of the wettest winters on record here in the UK and the wind that comes along with the storms have been something to behold.

So beginning of March I found a day when the temperature was unaturally high, so that, despite the wind, my model Shanice, was not going to freeze to death.  The only issue we may have was that she may take off!!!  Hence the need for my 2 assistants Teddy and Amber.  

Behind the Scenes at the Shoot

The Results

It was such fun on the day.  We kept the parachute low to the ground so that Shanice didn’t take off and managed to get some lovely shots.  The mud underfoot finally got the better of the skirt when it got so heavy we couldn’t throw it nicely any more.  So Here are the edited images and if you would like to do a Parachute Dress shoot yourself then take a look at the shoot page here.