Arts Design

BEAUTIFUL MOTHERS CALL THESE SHOTS

Most moms take photos of their kids. Today, we are featuring photos taken by moms who are super-passionate and gifted photographers. They’ll take your breath away.

ELENA SHUMILOVA

Elena Shumilova, mother of two, didn’t know that she had any special talent (or even interest) in photography until just a little more than two years ago, when she got her first camera.

Her muses are her two sons and the family pets and farm animals: a dog, cat, duckling, and rabbits, etc. They are all so fortunate to be living in an incredibly beautiful place -- a bucolic farm just outside of gorgeous outskirts of Andreapol, Russia.

Shumilova uses natural light, natural settings, and candid “poses” and yet her images portray an enchanted storybook looking life. Her eye has a magical style of its own, no matter where or what she shoots.

We certainly aren’t among the first to showcase her work. She’s garnered around 50 million views on Flickr. But we had to include it in our post today -- she produces some of the most beautiful photographs focused on motherhood that we have ever seen.

They are sweet and tender, without being sappy. They make us wish we were her children -- or that our childhoods were as beautiful as theirs appear to be.

Shumilova takes both her work as a photographer and her job as a mother very seriously. She shoots every day and processes her images at night so she can maximize her time with her children. She shoots with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera and a 135mm lens.

QUEENIE LIAO

Photographer Queenie Liao has developed a beautiful, whimsical photo series featuring her baby son, entitled Wengenn in Wonderland.

Every day, at naptime, as her son Wengenn drifts off into dreamland, Liao transforms him. He becomes the tiny star of her dream, while his bed becomes the dreamscape.

Liao’s childhood passion for fairytales and their fantastical illustrations stayed with her throughout her life. And now, as a mother, creates her own fairytale images all centered around the new love of her life, her child.

Liao envisions each production just prior to each day’s nap, imagining scenes from some favorite classic stories. She recreates them, quietly arranging ordinary household objects, toys, and materials, ever so artfully, around her unsuspecting sleeping baby.

And then she captures the scene with her camera, knowing full well that her baby will awaken and the scene will disappear forever.

More than 100 photographs of little baby Wengenn, from when he was just 3 months old until now, form a magnificent collection and documentation of his young and developing dream states. You can see them all in Liao’s Wengenn in Wonderland album on Facebook.

While Liao’s series was released in book form in China last year, the English version is in process.

UGNE HENRIKO

Mother and Daughter is a project that explores the relationship between photographer, Ugne Henriko and her mother. Henriko is fascinated by the genetic and characteristic similarities that she and her mother share. “I am trying to look into the general idea of being a copy of somebody else,” she explains.

Henriko has recreated her mother’s old photographs, posing herself as a mirror image. They look, uncannily, like twins. But of course, the differences between the two generations also comes through, albeit with subtlety.

All of the images on the left side are of Henriko’s mother, taken circa 1975, while the images on the right side are photographs of Henriko taken 37 years later.