Creating memories

Emily Ratcliff rushed to the hospital in 2017 to meet her friend’s newborn baby boy.

But instead of blankets or pacifiers, Ratcliff brought with her a camera, at her friend’s request, to document the whole process.

“I just fell in love with it,” Ratcliff said. “And it was literally the best gift I could give her.”

Two years later, she started Stork Creations, a birth videography and photography business for families expecting newborns.

Emily Ratcliff, a Portland native, offers her services to immortalize those first moments in a child’s life. She takes photos before, during and after the birthing process, depending on what her clients request. 

 She attributes her passion for baby videography and photography to her own childhood.

“Ever since I was little, I always (had) a camera in my hands,” she said. “My dad always failed to record the biggest moments in my life as a kid, so I think that’s part of it.”

Ratcliff said her father, Tim Morris, was supposed to capture her birth, but he got too excited in the moment. She laughs about it now, but she hopes to give other families the chance to have their special memories documented for the future.

“You can’t get those moments back,” she said. “The baby’s first cry or your partner’s first word when your baby is born is irreplaceable, and five years, maybe two years down the line you’re not going to remember exactly what they said and how everything went down.”

Epidurals and other drugs tend to cause drowsiness, she added, so having a documented version of the birth allows mothers to see what they may have missed.

Ratcliff’s friend, Kecia Eley, sparked the idea for her business by asking Ratcliff to capture her son’s birth after Eley found out she was pregnant with now 4-year-old Parker. 

“I don’t have many pictures or videos to look back on (from my childhood),” Eley said. “At the time, Emily didn’t have a business; she was just a friend of mine with a nice camera. When I got pregnant with Parker, I knew she’d be in the room with me.”

Eley was shocked when she realized Ratcliff took both videos and photos –– she got a lot more than she was expecting. She later asked Ratcliff to capture the birth of her daughter, Harper Huntsman, in 2018.

“As you get older, things are just kind of a blur,” said Eley. “You look back and think your childhood was just a snap of a finger and it’s gone.”

Since starting her business in July 2019, Ratcliff has done about 10 videos and nearly 25 photo shoots. 

Ratcliff’s business has mainly come from clients in Indianapolis, but she’s always open to work for local families. She also advertises in Anderson and Muncie.

Recently, the coronavirus pandemic has made it difficult for Ratcliff to enter hospitals and document the birthing process, so she’s been capturing a lot of newborn lifestyle moments, which she does in the comfort of the client’s home.

“I like it natural and raw and in the moment,” she said, noting she will get a few posed pictures but prefers to keep it mainly candid.

In one of her videos, the parents wrote a future letter to their child and read it to them.

She’s done some “fresh 48” sessions, which, after the family delivers their child, she goes in and takes photos for the first several hours after birth. While her specialty is in birth videography and photography, Ratcliff offers family shoots as well. She’s done family sessions several months after newborn lifestyle photos and enjoys seeing how much the babies have grown.

She offered a photo session as one of the silent auction gifts when her parents hosted the No One FIghts Alone benefit for the Smith family –– their son has Dravet syndrome — in September.

Ratcliff has been taking videos since she was a child. While at Jay County High School, she participated in the broadcast TV program. She edited and did a lot of the behind-the-scenes work, she said. She was on screen a few times, but she preferred to be behind the camera.

She moved to Indianapolis for college and graduated in 2016 from the University of Indianapolis with a bachelors degree in communications. She spent the majority of her time there studying videography. Ratcliff served as the news topical producer at Fox 59 for about two years before the station made cutbacks. 

Alongside her birth videography business, Ratcliff now works as the multimedia videographer/editor at Orbis Education. She makes training videos for nurse classes and travels for her work. She visited Portland, Oregon, in September with her husband, Harold, for some virtual reality sessions. She also traveled to England, Iceland and Denmark for the “Finding Hygge” documentary she worked on about the Danish concept of finding happiness.

Ratcliff has shown up at farmer’s markets to find potential clients. She’ll ask passers-by if they know someone expecting a baby. She receives a mix of reactions.

“Some people will run away from me, some people will have to think about it, some people will be pregnant,” she said. 

Morris and her husband, Harold, who were married last year, have been holding off having children until COVID-19 begins to disappear. She wants to document the whole process for her own children someday.

Happy times aren’t the only moments she captures, though. 

Some births can be traumatic for mothers, she said, and while it may take some mothers time to recover, many are thankful to have the moments saved later on.

“So for a lot of other moms, having photos and videos to look back on can be healing,” she said.

Ratcliff has also been taking classes for bereavement photography. She now offers free photo sessions to families that have experienced stillborn births. If it’s unexpected and her work is requested right away, she’ll hurry to the hospital to grab photos while possible. She hopes to give those families at least one photo with their child.

She believes the way in which Chrissy Teigen and John Legend documented the loss of their premature-born son, Jack, has started to make it less taboo to document stillborn or premature child deaths.

“I feel like society is slowly starting to become more (open),” she said. “It’s OK to talk about them; if you want to show off your baby, it’s your right … parents shouldn’t feel ashamed or anything. It’s their child, no matter what.”

To anyone debating whether or not to choose birth videography, Eley highly recommends it. She loved the work her friend did with Parker and now 2-year-old Harper. She also complimented Ratcliff’s work for being tasteful and something she felt comfortable sharing on social media.

“It’s not graphic, it’s not awkward, it’s not uncomfortable,” she said. “Emily remained professional and quiet and in the background, and quite honestly I forgot she was there half the time.”

While Ratcliff’s love is in video, she values photography as a great way to document life as well. Both mediums have their strengths, so she’ll always offer both for her clients. Although with video, she added, there’s always a bit more captured from the moment.

“You get to see a lot more; you get to hear everything,” she said. “You get to see, you know, a little brother see his little sister for the first time… which you get in photos as well, but you get to hear what the little brother’s saying when they’re first meeting.”