OUR EARLY BOUDOIR DAYS:
Hey everyone – Kimberlee here, doing a little reminiscing and thinking back on my very first boudoir shoot. Even though it was 11 years ago, the feelings are still palpable; it was equal parts excitement and scared-shitless-nervousness. If you’re new to boudoir, you can probably understand what I’m talking about here. When I think back on some of those early shoots, I cringe when I remember how I went into them a little (ok, maybe a lot) unprepared.
There’s SO much to think about during a boudoir shoot, from styling and set design, lighting and camera settings, and posing and expression. Not to mention the whole interaction side of things, as you need to connect with your client and make her feel comfortable through the process so that you can capture stunning images of her.
This is a LOT to think about during a shoot!
THE POSING PANIC
In my early days as a boudoir photographer, I would often focus so much on lighting and chatting with my client, that I would be in the middle of a session and completely forget which pose to do next. We call it the ‘posing panic.’
I would draw a blank, and then scramble to try and make up a new pose that would be flattering for her, all while talking to her and pretending like I knew exactly what I was doing so that she wouldn’t notice my moment of panic. Yikes.
It only took about one or two sessions like this to know that something needed to change.
A POSING PLAN
So here was our one small, simple change, that had a huge result: we created a posing plan for every single session, with every single client.
Super simple, right? But this small change had such an incredible impact on our boudoir shoots from that day forward, so we knew this was pretty important. It wasn’t anything too elaborate; often it was just a piece of scratch paper or a note we created on our phones, with a list that laid-out the plan for our shoot, with exactly which poses we wanted to do on each set.
Three things happen when you have a posing plan:
1) NO MORE GUESSWORK.
You’ve already got your plan, so there’s no need to wonder or worry or scramble. No need to second-guess yourself or wonder if you’ve already done this pose in the last set you shot. It’s all right there in front of you, so you can just glance at your posing plan and then keep doin your thing: making your client look and feel drop-dead GORGEOUS.
2) POSING CONFIDENCE.
When you’ve got your gameplan in your back pocket, and there’s no need to stress about your poses, then you will have so much more confidence going into your shoot. You can be completely in the moment with your client, focusing on making her feel comfortable instead of internally freaking out about what you’re going to do next.
3) VARIETY AND HIGHER SALES.
When you create a boudoir posing plan, you can be more strategic about getting a wider variety of poses. When you are able to show your clients a TON of beautiful images with a lot of variety, the likelihood of them purchasing MORE from you is a lot higher.
And, let’s be honest here – we are all business owners at the end of the day. Yes, we want our clients to feel beautiful and have an empowering experience – but if we can ALSO give them more images that they just have to have, then it will mean a bigger sale for us as well. It’s a win-win here, friends.
ACTION STEPS:
*CREATE A PLAN. Before your next shoot, list out the different poses you want to do with each set or outfit change. Super simple, now do it!
*LEARN TOP-SELLING POSES
If you are new to boudoir and still trying to figure out which poses work best with your clients, we would love to help you here! Through the years we’ve been in business, we have figured out the best poses that work well for all body types. These are our top-selling poses, meaning that our clients love their images – and BUY!
Our Pose Book is the place where we’ve listed out all of our go-to poses for you – and it’s a digital download, so you can grab it and start using it now.
*SEE HOW WE POSE:
Lastly… if you are a visual learner and would enjoy watching us Divas in action, we highly recommend getting our Posing Course! In this 2-hour course, we spend time at the beginning sharing all of our tips and tricks for posing, and then at the end, you’ll see us working with two REAL CLIENTS as we coach them into our top poses (from the Posebook).
We’d love to have you join us in that course, so go check it out now! Have a wonderful day, and as you go into your next boudoir shoot, we hope you rock it with a newfound sense of CONFIDENCE with your posing.
