My Boudoir Session

As a boudoir photographer, it was a non-issue that I was going to do a boudoir session before our wedding. I was super excited about it and had my outfits planned for weeks. I had the makeup girl we always use at the studio booked and ready to come along for the ride. I wasn't super concerned about my body because it's never been a big deal to me. I just wanted to do something fun for Corey and experience a session from the other side of the camera.

It.was.awful.

We got on the road and had a tire blow out just outside of Lamar which led to us being super late to the session. We got lost on the way there and finally found the location. It was a super creepy warehouse down in a shady area of Kansas City. Oh and the photographer was a guy. Thanks group on.

The session was fine. He didn't know I was a boudoir photographer because at that point, I was just a girl getting married. I didn't love the angles that some of the photos were taken but I was just along for the ride. I asked for girly tasteful poses and didn't really feel like that's what we got. I told Gwen that I still don't know how I felt about them. The pictures were promised to be back in time for the wedding to be given as a wedding gift. Until then, I just had to wait and see what the gallery would show.

If I were a normal girl without a healthy body image, I think my self esteem would have been hurt the day I saw them. I had to go through the 130 or so images 3 times to find the 20 pictures that I wanted edited and sent to me. The disc of images arrived today. Our wedding was over a month ago also by the way.

As a woman, I'm outraged that my curves were liquefied and removed. I would NEVER do that to a client. If a client mentioned that they had areas that they were uncomfortable with, I would go out of my way to make sure they were posed so they wouldn't question their photographs. If I wanted to make women feel badly about themselves, I wouldn't be a photographer. I'm an ally and their biggest fan when we're taking pictures. As we were doing our session, I only saw one picture on the back of the camera where you can tell I'm clearly nervous and there wasn't any positive energy to make me more comfortable.

I was so heartbroken that Corey saw the pictures only a few minutes after I did. There wasn't going to be any awesome mysterious photo reveal because I didn't feel like a goddess in them. He said I looked beautiful but really uncomfortable. I felt like I didn't recognize my body. I love my lovehandles that I can't shake for anything not matter how much time I spend on a treadmill (one hour in about 7 months now). I love my thighs that fit awkwardly into jeans so much so that the freaking Hallelujah chorus starts when I find a pair that fits. I think it's a damn shame that I didn't live up to some stranger's ideal body type when I'm pretty ok with mine.

Dani