
Tennille Gore
Creating a Custom Newborn Portrait & Baby Safety
ABOUT TENNILLE
Based in Coastal NC, I offer child, family, and maternity, however I consider newborn portrait photography my specialty. Having a background as an RN I am able to create individualized infant focused setups while maintaining client safety.
I graduated in 1999 from UNC Wilmington with a degree in Communications Studies with a focus in film making and theatre. It was in pursuit of a career in film that landed a camera in my hand. I planned to put it to use for location scouting. I took pictures of friends and shared them with my wedding photographer who offered some critiques and told me I had an “eye for photography.” I did a little hobby work for friends and I quickly learned that my love was photographing births! So much so that I returned to nursing school in the hopes of becoming a labor and delivery nurse. While I did become an RN, I didn’t make to labor and delivery before the birth of my last child. I had laid the camera down years before but with this new little one I felt the urge to get it out and dust it off. Along the way I had struggled with infertility and pregnancy loss. That journey shaped my feelings about documenting the miracle of pregnancy and birth, and beauty of the newborn infant.
My photography hobby grew out of taking a few images for friends for their Christmas cards in late 2014 and birth photography. Birth honestly still has my heart, but logistically I am not in a place in my life that I can offer it with any level of commitment right now. I never set out to do newborn photography, all though I remember starting at Anne Geddes calendars and being filled with wonderment as a child I have still so much to learn and in every image, I see what I failed to do. In 2015 I photographed my first newborn and it has grown from there.
I can credit my theatre and film days for the draw toward creating sets. I’ve always felt a strong pull in that direction. When I started out I was looking everywhere for inspiration. People would ask about my style and I had no clue what it was, I still really don’t. I quickly learned that while I liked incorporating interests of my clients, I want my images to have a certain feel to them and I want the baby to be the focus and I want it to feel like an individual work of art.