Skylar and Alexis were my very first engagement session in 2017. 5 years later, they’re about to become parents, and I got to do their photos again!

Even though we knew each other in college, Dan and I have gotten closer with Alexis and Skylar in the time since their engagement session. Dan and Skylar play Dungeons and Dragons with two of their other friends every week. We’ve been on some hikes, and our dogs love playing together!

Alexis and Skylar trusted me when I told them a spot that was at the top of my bucket list for photos: Devils Fork State Park. This park is the only public access point to Lake Jocassee, which is the best combination of water and mountains you can find in South Carolina. This park gave us beach vibes, fall woodsy vibes, and mountains, all close together. The photo of Alexis and Skylar walking on the bridge to the dock is one of my new favorites!

Alexis is due in mid-November. As much as I wanted to have fall foliage in these photos, we had the session done on the first day of October. We didn’t want to do the session too close to Alexis’s due date for a few reasons. One is that sometimes babies arrive earlier than their due date and we didn’t want to miss the window. The other is that sometimes the last stretch of the pregnancy can be super uncomfortable, making it hard to move around, so we had the session around the 34 week mark.

We almost rescheduled the session because Hurricane Ian was coming through. A few days earlier, it said there was a 90% chance of rain that day. Luckily, the rain was done early that morning, and the sun came through just enough. We couldn’t have asked for more perfect weather that day, and I think the forecast scared a lot of people away from the park that day, so we almost had it to ourselves!

Usually at any point during the fall, I can find SOMETHING that has some fall color in it, and I’ll milk it for a photo session. One of the bushes I found happened to be next to a beauty berry bush, which has some interesting colors in the fall—lime green leaves with electric purple berries!

I hope that one day, Alexis and Skylar’s daughter will enjoy looking at photos of the weeks before she was born. In the meantime, check out some of my favorite photos from Alexis and Skylar’s maternity photos at Devils Fork State Park!