Best of Michigan Maternity & Newborn Photographer (2026 Winner)

There’s a moment in almost every maternity session where a woman stops performing for the camera.

She’s been standing in the light for ten or fifteen minutes, still a little unsure what to do with her hands, still half-braced for the whole thing to feel awkward. Then something loosens. She rests a hand under the weight of her belly, turns toward the window, and forgets I’m in the room at all.

That’s the photograph. It’s the one she’ll hang in the hallway and walk past every day for the next twenty years, and it almost never happens in the first five minutes. It happens because someone did her hair and makeup that morning so she didn’t have to. Because the gown fit. Because nobody was watching the clock.

I’ve built the entire studio around getting to that moment. So it means something that other people noticed.

The 2026 Best of Michigan Awards

Two Wild Souls Photography has been named a Best of Michigan winner in the Maternity & Newborn Photographers category in the 2026 Best of Michigan Awards, presented by Guide to Michigan.

Winners are chosen through a combination of reader nominations, public voting, and editorial selection across categories spanning the entire state. Per Guide to Michigan, fewer than 10% of Michigan businesses receive this recognition.

What I keep coming back to is that this one came from readers. Nobody at this studio filled out a form arguing our case. Someone typed our name into a ballot because of how a session went for them, and then someone else did, and then enough people did that it added up to this.

Why the maternity and newborn pairing matters

The category we placed in is the one I’d have picked for us.

Maternity and newborn sessions are not two separate jobs to me. They’re two halves of the same story, usually photographed six to twelve weeks apart, often for the same family in the same year. I’ll photograph a woman between 24-32 weeks, and then I’ll meet her daughter or son at ten days old, and the second session is entirely shaped by knowing how the first one felt.

That continuity is the part clients tend to mention afterward. Not the lighting or the retouching. The fact that when they walked back into the studio with a newborn and no sleep, they already knew where the coffee was and who was going to be holding the baby.

What the recognition is actually measuring

Awards are easy to be cynical about, and I’d rather be specific than vague about what’s behind this one.

Every session at Two Wild Souls includes professional hair and makeup with Courtney, our in-house artist. It includes access to the full gown and wardrobe collection, sized XS through 4X, so nobody is squeezing into the one dress that technically fits. It includes guided posing, unlimited outfit changes, and no time limit on the session itself. Consultations happen in your home, before the day, so the plan is settled long before you’re standing in front of a camera.

Newborn sessions are held in the studio, where I control the temperature, the light, and the props, and where my newborn safety certification actually matters. Every setup, every prop, every position is built around the baby’s safety first and the photograph second.

None of that is unusual to say. Every studio in Metro Detroit calls itself all-inclusive. The difference is whether the specifics hold up when you ask, and this award suggests that for the families who’ve come through here, they did.

Thank you to the families who voted

I want to be clear about who earned this.

It was the mother who booked her maternity session at twenty-eight weeks convinced she wouldn’t like a single frame, and cried in the ordering appointment. It was the couple who drove in 45 mins away with twins and a diaper bag the size of a suitcase. It was every family who came back for the newborn session after the maternity one, which is the highest compliment this work gets.

You nominated. You voted. This is yours more than it’s mine.

Booking for the rest of 2026

We typically book out 6-8 weeks in advance, so if you’re on the fence and you want the ultimate experience & products, not just digitals then please inquire ASAP! We want to meet you, to learn about your story and to tell it in a way that looks and feels like you.

If you’re expecting and thinking about maternity portraits, the timing that works best to inquire is somewhere between twenty and twenty-eight weeks. If you’d like to talk through what a session would look like for you, start here.

I’d love to show you the room where all of this happens.

— Jasmine