I was looking around on DWF the other day, lost in the Digital Wedding Forum black hole (I call it that because I love the boudoir posts so much I could spend an entire day lurking around on there). Anyway, so there was a post about “being stumped” during a shoot and it made me realize that I have a bit of insight that I should probably share. Being that during boudoir I am working with someone who A) typically hasn’t had solo portraits done since senior year and B) above even that has to take their clothes off in front of me (a smiley and chatterbox stranger)- well let’s just politely say that this is very different from any other type shoot and our client certainly doesn’t have a relaxed posture or look on her face. With that said we definitely “pose” our boudoir shots quite a bit. Even the slightest move of the legs or arm can add major shape to the figure. BUT- the pose is really the last thing that we have time to think about, we have to keep focused on being upbeat, talkative and making the clients expressions as relaxed and “sexified” as possible. Since I can rarely shoot and talk and THINK at the same time, I always have a cheat sheets nearby with my fav poses or recent mag clips that I love. In our book we even have our top used poses for every shape all laid out for you. We named each one so that we could commit them to memory easily. This may seem like a pretty unexciting way to photograph, but being able to connect with our clients, while maximizing time and moving quickly through the shoot, has proven to be a big part of our successful biz plan.
A bit of inspiration that was laying around next to the cameras in the Woman Captured Studio.
One of the 12 poses we love to do! All of them are in our book for easy reference. Back in the day when I started these poses seriously took down my anxiety before boudoir shoots, because I knew if I couldn’t think of anything totally new and fresh, at least I had my favies nearby.
Peace out fellow Boudoir Divas (and Divos)- Marissa
I do the same thing for high school senior poses, I cut out poses from the magazines and paste them into one journal, it helped and like you said after a while I memorized most of them and those are “standards” you know you can’t go wrong with. My question for you is which magazines are your favorites for finding sexy poses?