During our winter stretch, we had a marathon day of boudoir photoshoots. One of our clients, Sati, was like most women when we had our first talk about the shoot – she was a ball of nerves about whether she could look right for boudoir photography, what she would wear, how to pose… but as with all clients, we take care of the whole experience from first contact to watching their jaws drop, or their eyes well up with tears, when they see their final product.
Our Creative Director, Camille Forté, took care of comfort control – even a day of shopping for lingerie that made Sati, who never before wore anything “boudoir”, feel cozy but confident. With a little coaching on posing and some encouragement from me from behind the camera, she was getting more comfortable with herself and being in front of the camera. She was a little stiff at first, as most clients are on their first boudoir photoshoots, but after just a little while she was breaking out of her shell. Sati’s shoot turned out to be among the best of 2016.
We let her see her first 10-15 shots to again lift her confidence at the start of the shoot, to show her the beauty we were capturing, and throughout the shoot we stopped to show her when she’d delivered an extraordinary shot. With hair and makeup, the entire session took about 3 hours. Many of our fellow photographers wonder why we take so much time with the client when most boudoir shoots last no more than 90 minutes, 2 hours at most. For us, it’s worth it to make sure that all aspects of the shoot go well – from the makeup to our lighting, the client’s poses and most of all, making sure that the client is comfortable with the shoot at all times.
In fact, when we first meet with a client, it’s over coffee. It’s a great ice-breaker that lets the client get to know us and vice versa. No client walks into a photoshoot seeing us as strangers! Having coffee together also gives us a chance to start going over the basics… boudoir photography is a transformative experience, and we cover everything from how the client envisions the “beauty” they want to embody to our communication schedule leading up to the day of the shoot.
For Sati it was a self-discovery process. She had never seen herself in that light, and had certainly never thought about standing confidently in it. From her pictures, you could never tell – and that’s what it’s all about. That’s the satisfaction of hearing a woman say “I never thought I could be that beautiful”. We never get tired of reminding them “You always were – you just needed someone to help bring it out and capture it.” A boudoir shoot should as much time as is needed to produce final images that make a client in awe of themselves, and priceless, perfect prints that will be cherished forever as the years go by.