Why I shoot Boudoir (Empowerment Sessions)
Why Boudoir Photography?
I shoot boudoir photography because I know exactly how it feels to not feel beautiful in your own skin. It feels empty and non-loving towards myself. I know women are faced with extraordinary pressure to look a certain way and when we don’t there is a lot of shame and wishing we looked different. That leads to low self-esteem and self-abandonment. I know what it feels like to abandon my unique self to try to fit in and have a desire to be deemed beautiful by the world. I did this for many years while straightening/taming my curly hair, buying the latest trends in fashion to keep up with my fashion job in NYC and the endless beauty products and services I purchased to maintain my skin in order to appear young and glowy.
Women often tell me they feel they can’t look beautiful because they feel too tall, weigh too much, or have too many stretch marks. They share they have never taken a good picture in their life. I know they are stuck in that same rut of trying to live up to our societies brutal standards of beauty placed on women. I know they are feeling the same pain and longing to feel beautiful just like I do
The Transformation
The transformation that takes place during the shoot is the best part of the whole experience for me. When a woman arrives most of the time she’s nervous, sometimes even visibly nervous and many often say “I can’t believe I’m doing this it’s so not me!”. Once they sit in the chair to get their hair and makeup done, the transformation begins. The client slowly starts to shed those signs and feelings of nervousness and anxiousness because we’re just girlfriends chatting and laughing while playing with makeup!
Then the shoot starts and it’s a seamless transition because I’ve already been taking pictures of them in hair and makeup. The first series of shoots is to get warmed up. When I show the client the back of the camera after the first series, I usually hear “OH MY GOD, that’s me? NO WAY that’s me!”. As we go into the next series and then the next, the laughter and smiles start to come out. Then she starts to feel comfortable and dare I say, sexy. The sexy eyes come out and the posing gets easier and easier. And you can tell that it’s starting to click with them and that’s when I capture the magic.
By the time we finish the session and go into the reveal, we’re friends. We’ve just shared an experience that they will always remember because we dared to push against what the world is telling us and we all feel beautiful and a little free. We’ve laughed and shared stories about our lives. We’re forever connected because we are women lifting each other up and sharing the beauty that has been inside us this whole time.
Once I show them their pictures after the shoot, their jaws drop. They see themselves like they never have before. This is one of the amazing thing about boudoir photography. I get a chance to show them how I see them, how their spouse sees them without the harsh judgement we carry around about ourselves and be their mirror. When they walk out the door, they’re smiling so big and they can’t wait to tell all their friends about what they just did.
A Little Piece of My Story
Remember how I said I know exactly how it feels to not feel beautiful in your own skin? Well I’ve felt this way for most of my life starting at a very early age when I realized I looked different. I am what some people may describe as a “mutt”. My mom is half Panamanian and half Hungarian, my dad is half French and half Irish. When you look at me I am racially ambiguous. But, the one thing that has always stood out is my big curly hair. My mom didn’t even know how to deal with this head of curls and it was never perfectly, non-frizzy spiral curls like Nicole Kidman or Julia Roberts. It was, and still is, coarse and eternally dry and will frizz if there’s any moisture in the air. I have been teased and made to feel different for having hair that is the exact opposite of the ideal beauty standard of western society hair, blonde, straight and perfect. I always felt ugly and awkward because my big hair didn’t even look right on my skinny small body. It took years and years for me to understand how to maintain my hair and give it the love and attention it needed. Slowly I started to understand my curly hair was what made me unique and I can honestly say I love knowing that no one on this planet has hair exactly like mine. It’s part of me and I can not expect to fully love myself while hating a part of myself. That’s not how self love works.
The Celebration of Beauty
For me, boudoir photography is a celebration of your body and who you truly are. I take pride in being able to help show women how to celebrate their bodies, their battles and their victories they’ve been through. Let me help remind you how to accept, love, and be proud of yourself.
Boudoir photography is so much more than photos. It’s about self-acceptance, self-love, and the art/beauty of the feminine. It is about choosing yourself and saying I deserve this! It’s about the experience that takes place between the time you walk in my studio and walk back out that door. It is about feeling your own unique beauty and that is something I believe every person deserves, especially women.
It is my job to be a mirror for my clients. Not the mirror that the world shows you to shame you, but the one who sees past all of the lumps, uneven skin, and other “imperfections” that we think we need to change . The one that shows you your sparkle and true essence of who you are.