Maura Black Photography

04/10/2026

SPRING MINIS ARE ALMOST HERE!🌸

Now is the time to snag your mini session spot so we can celebrate spring (aka surviving winter!) by creating photographs together that you will love forever. 🥰

Details/Booking link below 👇

✨APRIL 19th - Chicago - Lincoln Park South Pond (think gorgeous city views, meandering paths, budding blossoms)

✨APRIL 26th - Lilacia Park, Lombard, IL (think lilacs, lilacs, lilacs! And tulips galore!)

Book it here👉: tinyurl.com/575bjsy

- 15 minute photoshoot
- Minimum of 10 edited photos
- Online Gallery
- Printing Rights
- Good Vibes

All-in investment is $300. My standard sessions begin at $850 so this is a great time and cost efficient way to get in front of my camera and allow me to create beautiful images for you and those you love most ❤

PLUS you're helping make the world a better place because 50% of proceeds will be donated to the Greater Chicago Food Depository!

02/04/2026

Excited to see my first official article live on my favorite Chicago wedding blog! ❤️ In a seemingly endless sea of talented photographers in America's third largest city, where does an engaged couple even begin to find the right photographer?
Why by reading this blog, of course 💁🏻‍♀️💃🏻!

If you’re already on this wedding planning adventure, you’ve undoubtedly realized that finding the photographer for your wedding day is kind of a big deal. Because the truth is, long after the cake is eaten and the flowers have faded, your heirloom photos are the one tangible take-away from your...

12/16/2025

Pinching myself that I've been invited to document another incredible wedding in Napa Valley just shy of a year since I documented Katie and Jim's phenomenal day!

If you need me, I'll be dreaming of citrus breezes, the clinking of cheering glasses and the quite hum of jazz music drifting into the night sky above the endless rolling vineyards...

Maura Black Photography is an award winning wedding and portrait photographer based in Chicago. She is recognized for her editorial work featured in publications such as BRIDES and Style Me Pretty and is  best known for having lush, warm imagery and an unparalleled client experience. 

07/04/2025

05/12/2025

It may be Monday, but mentally I'm here. 🥂 I know I sound like a broken record, but my Lord. 🙌🏻 I am invited to capture some of the most epic parties imaginable and I feel so grateful. Saturday marked the real beginning of a busy wedding season, but I've already noticed a pattern forming. I'm four weddings into 2025 and after each one, I look at my work the next morning and think "oh my gosh. Is this my favorite work I've ever produced?!" And then it happens again the next weekend. And the next, and the next! 😭
I absolutely do not say this out of conceit. I'm seven years and 200+ weddings into this wild photography adventure. The very nature of creating work that is inarguably subjective is a very vulnerable way to make living. 👀 Every talented photographer I know has experienced a similar metamorphosis. You pick up a camera and think "I can do this". Then you realize how much you don't know about photography or indeed running a business. So you educate yourself. You practice (and practice...and practice). You make silly mistakes at first (and honestly feel like you're going to pass out from anxiety before every shoot for the first couple of years😂!) but through endless, endless hours of practice, hundreds of thousands of photographs taken in every lighting scenario you can imagine and tuning out the little voice we all have inside of our heads that says "you reeeaallly think you can do this?!" 🫣 before every wedding day until you have proven to yourself a billion times that you can ABSOLUTELY do this and tell that voice to pipe down forever.
If you are still here, God bless you. All of this rambling is to say .....Get ready 2025/26 couples - I'm coming for you! 📸🎉
Bride:
Groom: .smith
Planning:
Make-up:
Flowers:
Shoes:
Dress:
Venue:
DJ:
Hair:
Cake:

05/09/2025

It feels like forever ago that I got these beauties in front of my camera and tomorrow is their WEDDING DAY🎉🥰! Can't stop day dreaming over what epic imagery we will create together tomorrow!❤️ Let's goooooo!🙌🏻

05/09/2025

05/04/2025

Allison and Chris, two exceptional human beings who invited me into their lives to document their very best day. Take me back!😍🫧
As much as I love Chicago's iconic portrait locations, there's something really exhilarating about working with couples in their natural habitats and finding beauty in the ordinary. In this case, it was the block of their Wicker Park home. A brick wall with dappled lighting. A gorgeous overgrown community garden. It's an exhilarating challenge, finding the beauty, and there's nothing more fulfilling than the feeling of sticking the landing and creating art together❤️
Plus with a view like the one from rooftop, who needs to schlep out to the planetarium anyhow?!🔥



bridal

04/29/2025

T-minus two weeks until wedding season officially kicks off 🥳! While last year was crazy busy and I definitely needed to recharge over the quiet months, I now feel I've been laying dormant for FAR too long (with the exception of shooting four incredible winter weddings - thank god for you amazing people and your phenomenal celebrations!) with way too much pent up energy and creativity a'bubblin', I only have one more weddingless weekend to go!
So here are some of my favorite snaps from Katie and Alec's stunning October wedding from last year.
Can't wait to put more beautiful blooms in shoes this year - an obsession that began last season 🤷🏻‍♀️🤣!
Venue:
Dress:
Shoes:
Florals:
Planner:
Make-up:
Hair:
Video:
DJ:
Bridesmaids dresses: