FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WPTA) – “So God, what am I doing here?”

Angela Forker asked that question in 2018 as she reflected on her life up to that point. She had been a missionary, active in the church her husband led and now a newborn photographer.

She used handmade, ornate scenes to place her subjects in a whole other world, making the infants look like they were running, dancing or jumping. Forker said God then placed it in her heart to take those scenes in another direction — special needs children.

He even gave her a name for it, Precious Baby Project, a play on her business’s name, Precious Baby Photography, Forker said. It allows her to put the babies in a positive light and bring awareness to the conditions the children live with.

Forker said her work shows parents of special needs children they aren’t alone and helps them connect with other families who have a child with the same condition as their child.

“It’s just been such an amazing time of my life — showing the world the beauty and value of babies with special needs,” Forker said. “That life that maybe turned out a little different than what you expected as a mom and a dad and yet there’s still so much love and so much beauty.”

“I’m just showing the world that beauty.”

Those who are interested in having their child’s photo taken by Forker can learn more about the process here.

Aside from a lull during the COVID-19 pandemic, Forker has been hard at work making photos for the Precious Baby Project. Her work has taken her as far as Latvia to photograph terminally ill children and brought families from all over the nation to her studio to feature their special needs children in her fantastical scenes.

Most recently, her work led her to Seattle where two parents, Owen and Julia, and their son Joshua, a baby with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy — a condition caused by oxygen deprivation — were waiting for her with open arms. Joshua’s father was a pastor before stepping down to help care for his son, Forker said.

She said the family was still processing their son’s condition, navigating being first-time parents as well as being parents of a “medically fragile” child who came into the world with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck three times.

“They had several friends who were pregnant at the same time and they all had perfect babies,” Forker said. “And they had Joshua, who they loved so much, and it’s like your dreams are just crushed in that moment.”

Despite what they may have had planned for their lives and son, Forker said, the parents had to adjust what they expected their son’s life to look like. In many ways, she said, the photo shoot was as much for Owen and Julia as it was for photos of their son.

“As I prayed, I felt like God was saying ‘It’s more than the photos, you’re going out there for this couple,” Forker said.

After preparing everything for the shoot and just before she began photographing Joshua, she prayed over him as she often does with her subjects — this time including his parents. Shortly before the shoot, Forker said she felt God wanted her to share with the family that he had not forgotten them.

Deuteronomy 31:7-8 had come to her and seemed to be perfect for the family to hear, she said.

Little did Forker know, the verse was Joshua’s life verse, a verse by which someone lives their life.

After their prayers, it was time to get to work on the scene she said came to her immediately after she learned about the family: Joshua and the Battle of Jericho.

Copyright 2023 WPTA. All rights reserved.