I’ve shot a lot of Boudoir sessions lately. Ladies were gifting them for Christmas and I’m currently shooting cards full of girls for Valentine’s Day gifts. And shooting boudoir sessions, being the one behind the camera, has helped ME grow in an area I struggle with immensely. It’s helped me work towards overcoming some body image struggles for reasons I most certainly would never expect.
So here’s a Boudoir shoot from my perspective.
A woman contacts me, usually via email asking some questions. Sometimes I know her age, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I know what she looks like, and sometimes I don’t. That’s no concern of mine, because as an artist of people, I think they are all gorgeous.
A date is set, a confirmation is sent, and an almost guaranteed response…… “I’m so nervous”. Not me obviously, my girls. 😉
Upon the day of the shoot, we meet, usually for the first time at our private location. We discuss expectations and they get into their first outfit. And they are SO timid. I can see it in their faces. I can see it in their body language. They are scared, they are on display they are self conscious.
And what do you suppose is my job in this very unique situation…
Make them look beautiful?
Before I ever shot one of these I thought that would be the answer. But it’s not. I don’t need to make them look beautiful because they already are!
My job, the secret, the key is to making them look beautiful is to make them FEEL beautiful. And it’s easy to do, because THEY ARE beautiful. I’ve shot such a wide variety of women for these sessions. My youngest was in her early twenties, fresh out of college. My oldest was a grandmother to three! My shortest was under five feet and my tallest was over six feet tall. And while they vary so drastically in every way possible, they are all so, so incredibly beautiful.
And over the span of our hour together, I literally get to watch these women transform from meek and self conscious beings into these confident bomb shells. All of them.
It. Is. Amazing. Ah-may-zing.
And so here is my confession. Body image is probably my number one struggle in life. While I am extremely confident in who I am as a person, I sometimes feel my shell doesn’t match. I spend more energy than I would like worrying about how I look. Is my weight ok? Are my teeth white enough? Straight enough? Can you see that zit? Are my new gray hairs noticeable? And then I think about these women. Women who came to me, trusted me, to make them feel beautiful. And I wish I could see myself the way I see these women. Shouldn’t I be able to do that for myself? If I can instantly see the beauty in such a wide variety of women, and bring it out in them, shouldn’t I see the beauty in myself? Shouldn’t we ALL see the beauty in ourselves?
Shall we take a challenge together for 2015 to acknowledge our beauty, exactly as we are? Tall, short, heavier than we’d like to be, skinnier than we’d like to be? Sweatpants or perfectly primped? Gray hairs or colored just right, glasses or not, wrinkles, smile lines, sweaty or clean, manicured or bitten nails, bruised legs, natural curls, the whole lot. Let’s respect who we are. Let’s protect and honor our self image the way we would protect and honor our loved one’s self image. Wouldn’t it break your heart if your best friend told you she didn’t like the way she looked? I don’t even know what your best friend looks like but I am guessing she is beautiful in your eyes. So let’s all start thinking of ourselves in such a way.
Wordier than my usual posts and far more personal. 😉 And it wouldn’t be a blog without some images. So check out these bomb shells.
