DIY Moana Baby Photoshoot

Gaude Letiszia aka Ate Zia as how Matti calls her celebrates her birthday on July 18, 2021. She's just a week older than Matti and she's the daughter of my brother-in-law. Zhyriel, her mom, and I had the same OB and gave birth in the same hospital. She was admitted for a week in the hospital due to Zia's infection so when I was in the labor room, Zia, Zhy and their companion were still in the hospital. I didn't get to see her while at the hospital but my husband did.

So a year later, here we are back in Oslob, Cebu so we can attend Zia's first birthday. Matti will also celebrate his birthday by next week so we will be very busy by then but for now, we are busy with Zia's birthday first.

But for this blog, I want to share with you how we did the DIY or do-it-yourself Moana-themed photoshoot for Zia. I will talk about the following:

• Why Moana theme?

• Costume

• Raft, Sail, and other Accessories

• Photoshoot Location

• Gears used and Actual Photoshoot

• Tarpaulin Design

Notice that this is a free service for my niece and it is our gift for her birthday as well birthday as the tarpaulin design that we made, my husband and I which is used for her on the day's birthday celebration.

Why Moana theme?

Zia has curly hair and that's the main reason why the theme was Moana, she has short hair though unlike Moana but that should still work.

Aside from that, Moana sounds like "mo 1 na" which means turning one in our local dialect. So in her tarpaulin, it was mentioned "Mo 1 na si Zia" meaning Zia is turning 1.

Costume

I talked with Zhyriel and she said that as early as May, she already had thought of this theme, she made up the theme, bought and ordered all the needed things online on Shopee, all the balloons, the accessories, and everything that is in this photoshoot.

I am just amazed that today, due to the availability of online shops and fast delivery services, birthday themes, costumes, and all necessary stuff can be acquired with a simple swipe and tap of some mobile application icons.

There's waiting time, yes, but with proper preparation ahead of time, the planned concept can be well achieved just like how Zhyriel did it.

So finding shops that sell these costumes is very easy with the search function inside the application. The pricing is also affordable and budget-friendly compared to purchasing these items from physical stores.

Raft, Sail, and other Accessories

The support from the family played a very important role in the success of this photoshoot. Zhyriel had a reference for the shoot and Pinterest as well as Google Search have been good friends in this case.

There's a raft and sail needed so the father-in-law made the raft from some scrap plywood. Then her father looked for some branch from an ipil ipil tree, cleaned it, and was attached to the raft.

As for the sail, a white cloth was cut into a triangle, then I painted it with the wave logo from the movie then finally tied it into the branch. The result looked legit! We all agreed that it looked really nice, what do you think?

With that, we were all set. A day before the shoot, we have everything ready!

Location

My husband's family lives very near to the shoreline. They call it "baktason" but then when my husband and his brother checked the shore, it was high tide, so there was no shoreline from which we could get a view of the sand.

So at four in the afternoon, we headed to another Barangay, and gladly, there was a short white-sand shoreline. But there were so many tiny jumping creatures all over the shore. We can't transfer to another location though so we just proceeded.

The other issue that we had in the area was that other visitors were not very conscious of the environment and so there were several times where they can be seen in the background.

But the locals were very accommodating that they had offered seats for us as well as tables so we can have a great stay, we declined the offer as we were just there for a few minutes.

Gears used and Actual Photoshoot

I was supposed to use a Sigma 35 mm art lens with my Sony full-frame camera but we decided to use a 56 mm lens instead.

I was glad that Zia was cooperative during the shoot. It was also helpful that her older cousins were there to cheer her up and sing for her. They also played some children's songs to catch her attention.

Moreover, she was able to stand for a few seconds and smile at the camera too so we were able to get some snaps with her holding the sail and Heyhey too.

The only issue we had as mentioned above was the guests who were swimming in the area. It was so puzzling why they were standing in the background whilst there was a huge area and only four people were swimming.

We did try to call them and asked if they could stay at the side since the picture taking would only be just a few minutes. We wasted around 15 minutes waiting for them to get out of frame.

Overall, we had a successful shoot. The parents also had a few cameos but Zia dislikes being thrown on air so the father-daughter moment captured only a crying Zia, poor baby girl.

Tarpaulin

I made a tarpaulin layout from the pictures we took. Since Zhyriel already made a draft layout, it made my layout process very easy and fast.

Also, I was thankful for my husband who looked for some free .png files that I can use for the layout while I was taking a bath. The files were for the Moana name, the number 1 in shell design, some vector coconut leaves, and the flowers.

The design looked very nice and I was pretty satisfied. Zhyriel also loved it and had it printed in 5" x 6" and used as a backdrop for the on-the-day birthday party.

xoxo,

mommy jean of momentswithmatti

Love harder than any pain you've ever felt.