What I want my clients to feel at their gallery reveal.
Almost all of my clients are coming to me because they don’t feel confident and they don’t feel sexy. Many are so overloaded with work and family duties that they have lost touch with themselves until they forgot who they are.
It’s difficult to articulate the difference between what a clients walk in thinking they want from their boudoir session and what they get from their boudoir session.
Do they want badass photos? Yes.
Do they want to be pampered and spend a day that’s all about them? Yes.
Are they looking for a confidence boost? Yes.
And, of course, they get ALLLLLL of those things, but I think the greatest gift I can give another woman that she never knew she needed, is to see her reflection in my mirror.
I can move my mirror around wherever I want it. I can make it darker or lighter, take shadows away and add them in. With years of experience, I can move my client into the perfect pose and take the perfect photo because I am not looking at them through a mirror attached to a wall or from a phone on selfie mode in the reflection of their dirty bathroom mirror. I have the tools to do it right.
During retouching I remove bruises, scratches, acne and I generally smooth skin. When you see your photos for the first time, they are only quickly edited to straighten images, adjust colors or lighting etc. I have not changed your body at all.
Even during retouching I don’t change shape of your body, your size, lift breasts or anything along those lines. If your bra strap creates a pudge that wasn’t there before, of course I will smooth that out, but other than circumstantial or short term “flaws” I don’t change anything.
There is a method to my madness. I know that many of us would prefer to hang flawless images on our walls, and that’s what you get, but first I make you see yourself raw and unfiltered but through the eyes of someone who loves you and cares about you and wants you to feel amazing.
When you see it all and it’s still a beautiful image that you are proud of… that’s the special sauce right there. Even if I do make your stretch marks less noticeable for your wall art or album, YOU know that you looked hot as fuck and the retouching is minimal because you saw the original image. Then you cannot deny that you are a freakin badass bitch even if you want to.
We look in the mirror and pick ourselves apart, at least I used to. We focus on the stupidest details that no one else cares about and we make ourselves feel ashamed about it because what you see in your dirty bathroom mirror isn’t the same as the girl on the cover of Vogue or the Instagram model you follow.
How in the hell can you expect your bathroom mirror image, or even a selfie you took alone in your bedroom with shit lighting to be even remotely close to the cover of a magazine? Those girls are retouched AS FUCK. They are not perfect in real life. They are often picking themselves apart too. The image you are comparing yourself to went through a professional photographer who probably had multiple assistants and an entire carcuterie (or whatever the hell it is) table just for them and a professional retoucher who probably didn’t mind spending 6 hours making her waist 2 inches smaller and breasts two cups bigger. That shit is not the same.