The primary objective for boudoir photographers is to empower their subjects, encouraging them to embrace their unique beauty and sensuality. Photographers can highlight the individual’s strengths and showcase their personality through careful posing, lighting, and composition, creating a personalized and intimate experience.

The resulting images should evoke a sense of confidence and self-love, reflecting the subject’s inner strength and beauty. Boudoir photography is an art form that goes beyond mere physical representation, elevating the subject’s confidence and promoting empowerment.

Boudoir photography serves as a powerful medium to celebrate an individual’s physical form while maintaining a respectful and uplifting approach. The essence of this particular style of portraiture focuses on capturing the subject’s beauty, confidence, and vulnerability in a tasteful and artistic manner. The photographs often serve various purposes, such as intimate gifts to a partner or a means for the subject to embrace their self-worth and appreciate their own body. The following tips in this article are designed to help set you up for quality interactions with each boudoir session you book.

Get to Know Your Client in Advance

Establishing good rapport with your client is important for a successful boudoir photography session. It will help ensure you understand their goals and preferences by initiating a conversation well before the scheduled shoot. It’s always best to have these conversations face to face, allowing both you and your client to establish a sense of familiarity and comfort. During this pre-shoot meeting, ask about their expectations for the photographs, including any specific styles or themes that have caught their attention. Encourage open communication, actively listen to their ideas, and share your insights. As a photographer, it makes a huge difference to demonstrate genuine interest in your subject’s desires and offer valuable suggestions, creating a collaborative environment that builds trust.

Arguably, the most significant aspect of a successful boudoir session is ensuring the client feels at ease in your presence. By cultivating a comfortable atmosphere, you are much more likely to capture images that authentically represent the client’s personality and your artistic vision. Your ability to put your subject at ease can greatly enhance their overall experience and the quality of the photographs. It’s important to make sure that you and your client share a unified vision for the session. To accomplish this, consider reviewing existing boudoir photographs together, either from your own portfolio or another photographer’s work. This collaborative process can spark inspiration and clarify the client’s preferences, allowing you to be confident that you can fulfill their expectations.

Help Each Client Prepare for the Shoot

To craft a seamless and successful boudoir photography session, it’s in everyone’s best interest for you to each client arrive well-prepared. Taking the time to educate your client about what to anticipate during the shoot and offering guidance on various aspects will help ensure a smooth process. Encourage your subject to prepare multiple outfits, selecting options that resonate with their personal style and complement their figure. Offer suggestions for any grooming and pampering activities that could boost their confidence on the shoot, such as a spa day or professional hair and makeup services. On that note, I strongly recommend that they conduct a trial run for their makeup and hairstyle to prevent last-minute decisions and to ensure their desired look is achievable. There’s nothing worse than having a shoot botched by an overzealous makeup artist that goes too far with the makeup job on your client.

Assist your client in practicing poses before the shoot, helping them to become familiar with various angles and positions that flatter their body and showcase their personality. By determining the most effective poses in advance, you can save time and effort on set while alleviating any pre-shoot nerves your client may have. As basic as it may seem, it is also the photographer’s responsibility to help remind clients to prioritize self-care before the shoot. Suggest they get a good night’s sleep and stay well-hydrated in the days leading up to the session. This not only benefits the client but also helps you as the photographer, because a well-rested and refreshed subject will naturally look their best during the shoot.

Match the Right Location for Each Client

A well-chosen location can play a significant part in creating a memorable and successful boudoir photography session. The ideal setting should reflect the subject’s personality and style, while also providing a comfortable and intimate atmosphere. Whether you opt for an indoor or outdoor shoot, consider the following options to ensure the perfect backdrop for your boudoir photos.

Indoor Options

1. Home setting: Utilizing the subject’s own home can create a personal and intimate ambiance, allowing them to feel at ease and relaxed. Familiar surroundings provide a sense of comfort, enabling the subject to express their true selves more effortlessly. Consider using various rooms, such as the bedroom, the living area, or even the kitchen to create diverse and unique images.

2. Hotel or Airbnb: Renting a luxurious hotel room or a stylish Airbnb property can add a touch of sophistication and style to the boudoir session. Be on the lookout for locations that have distinctive features, such as large windows, statement furniture, or unique architecture, to enhance the visual appeal of your photographs.

3. Studio: A professional studio offers complete control over lighting, props, and backdrops, making it an excellent choice for photographers seeking a controlled environment. With a vast array of options, a studio can be customized to suit the subject’s preferred aesthetic.

Outdoor Options

1. Natural settings: For a more organic and free-spirited vibe, consider a boudoir session in a picturesque natural setting, such as a secluded beach, a forest, or a meadow. Outdoor locations can provide a stunning and dynamic backdrop, allowing for a diverse range of poses and compositions. The range of options is typically much more expansive than indoor locations, simply because there’s enough freedom of space to continually mix it up.

2. Urban landscapes: Urban environments, such as city streets or rooftop terraces, can provide a unique and modern atmosphere for a boudoir session. The juxtaposition of sensual poses against a gritty, industrial backdrop can create visually striking images that resonate with those seeking an edgier aesthetic. 

Make the Most of Natural Light

The secret to capturing breathtaking and flattering boudoir images often lies in harnessing the power of diffused natural light, which can be achieved in various ways in both indoor and outdoor settings. For boudoir photography, natural light is a powerful tool capable of creating a soft, romantic, and captivating ambiance. By understanding how to harness and manipulate natural light in both indoor and outdoor settings, photographers can achieve stunning results that elevate their boudoir sessions.

Large windows are an excellent source of natural light for indoor boudoir sessions. Position your subject close to the window, allowing the light to softly illuminate their features and create a delicate interplay of light and shadow. Experiment with different angles and distances from the window to achieve varying levels of contrast and intensity. When working with limited natural light, reflectors can help to maximize its potential. With a placed reflector, you can bounce light onto your subject, creating a more even and flattering illumination. Reflectors can also be used to soften harsh shadows, ensuring a more balanced and visually appealing result.

When shooting outdoors, the golden hour (the period shortly after sunrise or before sunset) offers ideal lighting conditions for outdoor boudoir sessions. The warm, soft light during this time helps to create a dreamy, ethereal atmosphere, perfect for capturing intimate and sensual images. When shooting during the day, harsh sunlight can create unflattering shadows and overexposed areas. Use natural shade from trees or buildings to diffuse the sunlight and create a more even and flattering lighting environment. Cloudy weather may not be ideal for sunbathing, but it can provide beautifully diffused and soft lighting for boudoir photography. Overcast conditions act as a natural soft box, evenly distributing light and reducing harsh shadows.

In the world of boudoir photography, the photographer’s role is to empower their subjects, highlighting each client’s unique beauty and sensuality through carefully chosen poses, lighting, and composition. Building a relationship, understanding the client’s expectations, and helping them prepare for the session are essential for a successful shoot. Selecting the perfect location and harnessing the power of natural light, photographers can create an intimate experience that showcases the subject’s personality and captures their essence with grace and artistry. Implementing the suggestions above will allow you to create powerful images that inspire and encourage anyone that sees the final works you create.

Cover image by Rex Jones, capturing Sandy Lynne Photography in action on a local boudoir session.

All other images are provided by Sandy Lynne Photography and used with permission.

Man Ray’s first fashion shoot was a disaster. It was 1922, and the artist had just arrived in Paris from New York with one suitcase, $100 and the singular goal of becoming one of the bright young things of dadaism alongside Duchamp and André Breton.

He had been taking photographs for a few years, but mainly portraits (Jean Cocteau was an early Paris sitter), and not always enthusiastically. He later said “photography is not art”, and that he would only shoot things he couldn’t paint. Still, he had no money, so when he was commissioned by Paul Poiret, the French couturier who took women out of corsets and put them into harem pants, he agreed. Back then, illustrations were the go-to for fashion houses, but Poiret was after something a bit different, which Man Ray was. Except the American turned up at the salon with no idea what he was doing. The lights weren’t right, and the electrics broke on set. Poiret didn’t like the pictures and refused to pay.

These photographs, among the early work once described as “appallingly banal” by the French critic Alain Sayag, never saw the light of day. But they became Man Ray’s Damascene moment. According to Romy Cockx, curator of a new exhibition at Antwerp’s MoMu, which looks at how fashion informed Man Ray’s work and how he, in turn, influenced the industry, “his wish to be accepted as a painter meant he dismissed his work as a fashion photographer and photography as a whole. Yet, he was pleased with these shots, pleased with what he had created”.

Man Ray went on to take portraits of Parisian high society and shoot for fashion magazines and various cosmetic brands, while toying with different photographic methods such as solarisation (exposing a partially developed photograph to light to create a dark outline) and double exposures. There were, it seems, two Man Rays. One, the world-famous surrealist who turned banal objects into works of art, and the other, a prolific fashion photographer who parked his unease about the industry to create a body of work which, in the end, accounted for more than his entire non-fashion work put together. It also bought him a nice house in Hollywood. Without one, it seems, we wouldn’t have the other.

The MoMu show has a short run, largely because you simply can’t have a 110-year-old dress on display for too long. Based on versions held in Marseille and Luxembourg that took place in and around the Covid pandemic, it aims – by and large successfully – to reconstruct Man Ray’s career during the 1920s and 1930s using more than 200 photographs, while contextualising his work within past and contemporary fashion by Chanel, Lanvin, Loewe and Martin Margiela.

The show opens with coat hangers. A single one whose wire has been folded into a pair of breasts from the 90s by the Belgian designer Margiela – and a 1920 assemblage of 63 wooden ones called Obstruction, by Man Ray. Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia in 1890 (he changed his name as a teenager), his parents were Russian immigrants with a background in fashion. His mother was a seamstress and his father a tailor who would bring clients home for fittings. Man Ray never explicitly cited either as having any impact on his career but equally, “if he was the son of a butcher, chances are these would be knives hanging from the ceiling,” says Cockx.

Of the 200 photographs, most are of his lovers, Lee Miller and Kiki de Montparnasse, which the exhibition convincingly links to the dresses beside them. According to Belgian fashion expert and MoMu guide, Katleen Derijcke, Margiela (quite innocently) never made a direct link between his work and that of Man Ray. It’s an intriguing claim, one that recalls Tony Benn reading Marx as a middle-aged man and discovering that the German had “already come to the conclusion I’d come to about capitalism” over a century before him. Margiela’s 1996 spring/summer collection features photographic negatives of articles of clothing; his 2008 body suit is overlaid with a black trompe l’oeil bra. It’s all undeniably Man Ray.

In fact it’s remarkable how many designers borrowed from Coat Stand, Man Ray’s first nude, in 1920. The trompe l’oeil effect, made famous by Man Ray in his image of a woman behind a coat stand wearing black stockings, has been replicated time and again, as seen in a 2022 Loewe dress with a pair of balloons covering the breasts. Cockx also sourced a trompe l’oeil knit by Celine in 2012 which is almost identical to one worn in a 1930 image of Miller.

This being Antwerp, the focus elsewhere is on Belgian designers. Some you may not have heard of (Norine and Timmermans) and some you possibly have (Ann Demeulemeester and Dries Van Noten). Part of the Antwerp 6, these fashion students who graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine arts between 1978 and 1982 were among the most highly regarded designers of their generation. They were given their name because, after storming European catwalks, none of the press could pronounce their surnames. Margiela is older, but considered to be an honorary member.

Man Ray’s fashion work proper is divided between two decades and two magazines, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. In 1924, he landed a six-year gig shooting for the former, which coincided with that decade’s receding hems and dropped waists. A change of staff at Vogue meant Man Ray stopped in 1930 before signing a contract with the more avant garde Harper’s Bazaar in 1934. Carmel Snow, its editor, encouraged the photographer’s techniques – it was here that he was encouraged to use solarisation as standard.

“It’s not always obvious what is fashion photography and what is not,” says Cockx, of Man Ray’s work. Who else could glue glass beads to a woman’s face (Les Larmes, 1932) and use it to sell Cosmecil mascara? His famous shot of Peggy Guggenheim in a Poiret dress, her back to the camera and a coy turn to the lens, looked like a fashion editorial but was in fact a portrait. Another photograph shows a model wearing a gold gown by Madeleine Vionnet reclining in a wheelbarrow padded with pink satin. It looks like surrealism but in fact appeared in Harper’s Bazaar in 1937. Rather than distract from the dress, the angle somehow elevates it. “The contrast between the glamour and the practical is so arresting you can see why this sort of thing ended up in magazines,” says Cockx.

Most intriguing perhaps were the angles – either bird’s eye or worm’s eye view – and poses. Man Ray made his models mimic mannequins and even introduced props such as the large white birds he commissioned from the sculptor Giacometti as backdrops to a Chanel shoot in 1937. It was this commercial interplay between earning money, making art and poking fun at fashion, that made him a precursor to Andy Warhol.

If today, fashion is about selling a complete lifestyle rather than a single dress, we can probably chalk that up to these techniques. Most of the time, the clothes play second fiddle to the image. Fashion magazines today are often contractually obliged to shoot whole looks straight off the catwalk.

Between 1936 and 1938, Man Ray’s work would appear in every issue of Harper’s Bazaar. However reluctant he was to photograph Schiaparelli gowns, he knew better than to bite the hand that fed him: “I was going to make money – not wait for recognition that might or might not come,” he wrote in his memoir, Self-Portrait.

Impressively, most of the clothing comes from the archive – “clothes really don’t travel well, and other museums would do well to observe this”, says MoMu’s head curator, Kaat Debo. Still, this is a tricky time for fashion exhibitions. “Everyone wants a blockbuster,” she says. “But there is a tension between public and privately funded museums. In the past, we’ve seen big brands put on exhibitions, which they’ve extensively toured in important markets, and with bigger budgets. But there is a different and specific role that publicly funded exhibitions can and should take up, which is to be more critical of the industry – the impact fashion has on society and the planet. We can deal with the creativity of fashion but also the dark side.”

While it’s unlikely Man Ray would have endorsed such an exhibition, the snobbery he held as a young man in Paris must have softened: towards the end of his life he was often seen scouring secondhand bookshops looking for old copies of Vogue. “Financially it absolutely helped his career, but also with fame, and he knew that,” Cockx says. Noire et blanche, a surrealist shot of Man Ray’s lover, Kiki de Montparnasse, beside a black mask, was published in Vogue in 1926. In 2017, it sold for over $3m at Christie’s, Paris.

“The reason the photographs in the exhibition are so small is because they’re from negatives found in one of his last ateliers,” says Cockx. “The fact that he didn’t destroy them suggests they mattered to him, one way or another.”

Samsung’s Galaxy S23 Ultra was (and is) an excellent phone on release, no doubt about it. That new 200 MP sensor for the main camera brought us the capability to take highly detailed RAW photos and also improved night time performance. In Night Mode, the phone will bin the pixels in clusters of 16, giving you 12 MP pictures taken with extra-large pixels capable of collecting more light.

Can Samsung squeeze out better performance out of that 200 MP sensors? Maybe, maybe not. We wouldn’t be surprised if the improvements try to tackle the performances of the ultra-wide and telephoto cameras. These struggle more with dark scenes, due to their physical limitations (they are still OK, but nowhere near that main camera).

As far as when we could expect such an update to come out — we can’t be certain. But there’s no rush — we are enjoying the S23 Ultra camera as it is and we’d rather have Samsung take its time before tinkering with it.

Weird time we live in — when the hardware camera in your pocket can suddenly change the way it performs due to an update that it receives wirelessly (and, depending on your settings, without even asking).

A group of photographers was nearly run over by a Formula 1 car during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix yesterday, and an inquiry is now underway to find out what happened.

Apparently believing the race had finished, a crowd of photographers and officials had gathered in the pit lane in anticipation of the podium celebrations.

However, on the very last lap of the race, French driver Esteban Ocon came into the pits for a change of tires and as he entered the garage area there was a crowd of people in his way.

“I’m arriving at 186 miles per hour,” (300 kilometers per hour) Ocon says, “[I’m] braking very late, and I see the people all around. Crazy. It could have been a big, big one today.”

The onboard footage from Ocon’s Alpine F1 car shows how blind he is when entering the pits and did not see the gathered photographers until late on — it forced him to take avoiding action by hitting the brake pedal harder than normal.

The governing body of F1, the FIA, admits that the situation needs to be looked and “reconsider these procedures to ensure that this situation does not occur again.”

“The FIA representatives expressed their regret at what happened and assured us that they would do so in time for the next event,” it adds.

Photographer’s Perspective

Russian photographer Evgeniy Safronov was in the media scrum that was nearly run over and insisted that it wasn’t as bad as it seems.

“It’s a great example of when the race was not the best so we need to discuss something. And we need better headlines than all the ‘It could have ended in tragedy’,” he says.

“I’ll tell you what happened, this time the FIA gave the go-ahead a little earlier than usual. And it wasn’t just photographers but also officials,” he says.

“Yes, it was certainly dangerous and it shouldn’t have happened. But in the very, very last case, there was a person behind the wheel and his car had brakes.”

The race was held in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku and was won by Red Bull’s Sergio Perez who is attempting to take the fight to his double-world champion teammate Max Verstappen.

When the iPhone debuted in 2007, Carol Golemboski began to worry. With high-powered digital cameras suddenly filling everyone’s pockets, the professor of photography at the University of Colorado Denver noticed fewer students signing up for darkroom classes—her specialty—and she feared for film’s future. But surprisingly, there’s been a resurgence of student interest in the ultimate “latergram” in recent years, as film-focused shutterbugs look to stand out from the digital hordes. “The darkroom is starting to become cool again,” Golemboski says. “Part of it is that there’s still a kind of wonder and element of chance when you’re working with film.”

Perhaps it isn’t a surprise, then, that Denver’s premier destination for analog photography is about to start a second life of its own. This month, the Colorado Photographic Arts Center (CPAC) is opening a nearly 4,000-square-foot headquarters in Capitol Hill that will house a classroom, two gallery spaces, a storage facility for the nonprofit’s prized pieces, and—most enticingly for photographic film fans—a darkroom that improves upon CPAC’s old one with ADA-accessible machines, more room for more people, and enlarged chemical baths that allow photogs to develop bigger prints. “We also offer [paid] classes and tutoring,” says CPAC executive director Samantha Johnston. “Being our 60th anniversary and moving into this new building, this is a big year for us.”

Founded in 1963, CPAC is best known for its permanent collection of more than 800 prints by such lens-toting luminaries as Ansel Adams and Imogen Cunningham—as well as local professionals including Golemboski. Despite its longevity, the nonprofit has, at times, struggled with funding and been forced to endure a nomadic existence; the organization has operated gallery and classroom spaces in City Park West, Belmar, Highland, Lakewood, and, most recently, the Golden Triangle. But thanks to expanded membership and fundraising under Johnston, who became executive director in 2015, the new location at 1200 Lincoln Street has a 10-year lease with an option to renew for 10 more. “That’s 20 years of stability for an organization that’s never had that,” says CPAC director of communications Megan Ross. Ross believes the spot, just blocks from downtown, will draw more walk-in visitors who can appreciate all the different types of photography CPAC champions.

That includes digital photography, but Johnston shares Golemboski’s excitement about film’s revival—which she likens to that of vinyl records­—and her organization’s role in protecting and propagating the practice. After its home’s grand opening on May 18, CPAC will be able to provide a lens through which new generations of photographers—like Golemboski’s students—can experience the thrill of film, no matter what new fruit falls from Apple’s tree.

  
Photo by Selina Roman” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”> click to enlarge

Photo by Selina Roman

Say cheese! May is International Month of Photography, and St. Pete is celebrating with a series of events showcasing the area’s best photographers.

The events come courtesy of a small group of Tampa Bay-area photo influencers, three of whom are no strangers to CL. They include Tampa photographer Agueda Sanfiz, who introduced the Tampa Bay area to family documentary photography with “Picture (im)perfect” at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts in 2021; Beth Reynolds, who became Tampa’s first Photographer Laureate in 2003; and photography historian and curator Marieke van der Krabben (formerly of FMoPA). The three women form the Board of Directors of one of St. Pete’s newest arts organizations – St. Pete Month of Photography, or SPMOP for short.

When I wrote this, The SPMOP website listed eight SPMOP events. Some of them were already in the works and SPMOP is just promoting them, but the majority are fresh collabs.

“When we started sending emails out to the people that we know, word of mouth worked really well,” Agueda told CL. “People started suggesting to us events and partnerships. So it’s been a good combination of us reaching out to organizations, but also people coming to us, which shows how excited the community is about having something that is lens-based [photography] centered.” It seems like every time I visit the website, they’ve added something new.

SPMOP began with the idea for a photo laureate competition. “The photo laureate was the first thing we knew we were going to do because it’s a way to bring new talent forward,” Sanfiz told CL in a phone interview.

Thirty-two photographers applied during the 3-month submission period. From those, the team narrowed it down to five finalists — Jaime Aelevanthara, Selina Roman, Thomas Sayers-Ellis, Emily Will, and Tristan Wheelock. The Morean Arts Center is displaying their work throughout SPMOP.

“The main goal was to select photographers that show their own style and creativity, and most importantly, their own way of telling a story in their photographs,” van der Krabben told CL. “The five that we selected all show their own specific style and their specific way of narrating a story inside of a photograph or a series of photographs.”

May 13 at the Morean, SPMOP organizers announce which of these five photographers gets to be St. Pete’s first-ever photo laureate. St. Pete’s first photo laureate will spend the next year documenting life in St. Pete. At the end of the year, they’ll print and frame their photos for all of St. Pete to see.

Before that, St. Pete residents can see (and purchase) photos from a much more extensive selection of St. Pete photographers at Five Deuces Galleria’s “Unique Perspectives,” which opens May 6 and will also be on view during Second Saturday ArtWalk May 13 and on Mother’s Day.

Tampa Bay area photographers submitted 444 photographs for inclusion in the show. From these, Five Deuces gallery curators Geoffrey Baris (fashion photographer) and Julie Haura selected 107 images with input from van der Krabben.

Together, they selected images demonstrating unique perspectives, as the show’s title suggests.

“We were looking for photographers that showed us a perspective you don’t always see,” says Baris. “We didn’t need to see sunsets, although there are probably a couple of them in there. But the majority of the work is something the photographer caught with their camera that people wouldn’t normally see…..”

“The three of us together ended up being a good mix, and I think we’re going to have a great show,” Haura added.

In addition to showcasing the work of our Tampa Bay area photographers, SPMOP provides professional photographers and photography enthusiasts with several opportunities to improve upon their craft, including workshops in street photography and seascapes, and a portfolio review at The Morean.

Beyond SPMOP-organized events and collaborations, several May photo shows were already in the works in and around St. Pete. Exhibits at the Leepa Rattner Museum of Art in Tarpon Springs celebrate the legacy of two St. Petersburg photographers – Herb Snitzer and Tom Kramer. Meanwhile, the Museum of Fine Arts hosts a series of images from Japanese photographers working in Japan during the Meiji Era (1870-1900).

Keep St. Pete Lit! closes SPMOP with a photography-themed open mic at The [email protected], where participants recite an original poem inspired by a photograph of their choosing. The event represents SPMOP’s desire to honor photography’s interdisciplinary nature. “Photography penetrates every single aspect of our lives,” Agueda told CL. “It’s present everywhere. We use it for marketing, we use it to document our family lives…That interdisciplinary nature is so important.

“I’m excited about this [open mic],” says Agueda, who hopes to couple photography with music for next year’s SPMOP and Lumen Photo Festival. “We can do that with the other arts. I mean, you look at how the Morean presented Tom Kramer’s work – dance inspiring photo and the other way around. We have to foster those kinds of collaborations, particularly in a large platform like a photo festival….”

For the complete list of SPMOP events, see spmop.org

Working in his California home 3,000 miles away during Covid, the director struck a sympathetic chord with the venerated photographer. A book and two gallery shows resulted.