Alien baby photograph

VANCOUVER — In Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic, “Alien,” the crew of the Nostromo begin a voyage unknowingly carrying a new being along with them.

Thirty-nine years later, Todd and Nicole Cameron of Nanaimo, drew inspiration from the film to tell their friends and family that they too will embark on a voyage with a new being.

On the rainy afternoon of Sept. 20, Nicole Cameron donned a dreamy, peach-coloured chiffon dress that showed off her eight-and-a-half-month baby belly, while her husband wore an off-white sweater and a paternal expression to pose in a pumpkin patch for their photographer, Li Carter.

A few photos in, Nicole Cameron’s expression changed to one of pain. She lay in the pumpkin patch, splattered in mud, as a life form tore through her stomach. It was the creature from “Alien.” “Over the summer Nicole had been talking about this baby inside her, and how it was so weird to see it moving and she could feel its elbows and feet, hands moving all around her,” Cameron says. “It felt like an alien entity inside of her and I kind of put two and two together.”

While cruising around his neighbourhood this August, Todd Cameron, 44, spotted a garage sale with various knick-knacks from movies. As he sieved through the treasures, he spotted a silicone model of the chest-bursting alien. He paid a handsome $15 for it.

Cameron remembers the first time he watched the movie. He was about 12 years old, and it was his first horror flick, watched late at night after his parents went to bed.

He says he remembers the scene of the birthing of the beast vividly.

“It just seemed so realistic and so unexpected because they were all sitting around having a meal,” he says. “There seemed to be no danger in the room. For it to come from within, no one was expecting. And I just remember thinking it was a super, super cool. Something coming from inside you, that just seemed to be extra creepy to me.”

While gluing and putting together his newly acquired alien treasure, Cameron asked his wife whether she’d be interested in a comedy-horror maternity photo shoot, seeing as she wasn’t interested in a traditional one.

Gory costumes are hardly new for the couple, who met on Halloween five years ago at Nanaimo’s Oxy Pub, where Todd was working as a karaoke host. His future wife came in limping, dressed as a zombie with blood oozing out of her neck and face.

“She was in character so she wasn’t talking and she I was just blown away.”

A few months later they connected through Facebook.