We had a lot of fun at Imaging USA in Nashville, and we can’t WAIT for next year (2011 Imaging USA in ANTONIO TX!!!) We never had a chance to blog the random photos from our time in Nashvegas, so here are a few of them:
So… YES, we realize that Imaging USA was waaaaaaaaayyyyyy back in January 2010. And YES, we realize that by now nearly THREE MONTHS have passed. But, better late than never, RIGHT?! 🙂 M & I were incredibly honored to have been invited to give our speaking presentation, “Boudoir Is The New Black”, as PLATFORM SPEAKERS at Imaging this year – woohoo!!! We are honored and humbled to say that we were the first boudoir photography platform speakers to grace the stage at a major photography convention since the resurgence of popularity w/ boudoir… and we know it’s because… “BOUDOIR IS BACK!”™ (That was our speaking program title for our 2008-2009 speaking tour!) 🙂 If you joined us for our presentation at Imaging, you will remember that we were COMPLETELY blown away at the turn-out during our program. You guys, honestly, we were expecting maybe 300-400 people (we even printed out just 200 fliers to put on the first 200 seats). You can imagine our utter surprise, then, when we walked into a room that held over 1000 seats. And you can ALSO imagine our complete shock when, on the day of our presentation, there was standing room only… we heard a report that there were up to 1500 photographers packed into that room… and that some photogs were turned away at the door and told to find another room, because ours was already packed! What the….!? CRAZY, right??? Here’s a little video that shows a little glimpse of that day:
*NOTE: If you missed our speaking presentation at Imaging, you may know that we were able to do a mini-version of our presentation for a PPA webinar this last month! If you’re interested in watching the webinar, you can actually download it on PPA’s webinar site! We’re also excited about a few upcoming speaking programs that we have scheduled for 2010 & 2011… and we’re crossing our fingers in hopes that WPPI will finally catch on and let us speak there next year! (We’ve been asking them if they’d let us speak for the last 2 years… we figure it’s finally time for a little ‘divaliciousness’ to take to the stage in Vegas… *wink, wink… we love you, WPPI!) 😉 We know that WPPI may need a little encouragement, though, from our lovely/wonderful friends & peer photographers – SO – if any of you MIGHT be interested in helping us get on stage to share our boudoir love during WPPI 2011, why not shoot a little message over to WPPI? (*another double wink inserted here… pretty please w/ a cherry on top)!
ALSO, we have to give another big THANK YOU to our sponsors from Imaging USA: SHOWIT & BAY PHOTO!!!
Morning everyone! We always say that we have so much going on here, just complete randomness galore. So I wanted to just walk you through about half a day here so you can get a visual of what really is happening in this big ol’ studio. For the most part I feel a little lost through out the day, me n K’s matching dry erase to-do boards are absolutely essential (as I wrote that sentence another to-do just popped into my head and I just had to add it to my board before I forgot what it was entirely, change our Client Lounge to talk about our Supermodel Cinema Boudoir Short on our Supermodel Boudoir Package). Thanks for stopping by our blog y’all. It always amazes me when I look at our google analytics stats and see a combined total of 30,000 plus hits per month on our sites, wow. Who woulda ever thought our wacky world would be so interesting to people. I feel very lucky.
xoxo, Riss
WOW! We definitely had WAYYYY more votes than we ever imaged for this contest! Remember, the winner of our Paris Workshop contest is going to receive $400 off their boudoir workshop fee! Thank you to all those who voted on our blog and there were a couple of you that were so close. And the winner is….LAURA!!
The second week of The Boudoir Divas workshop is going to be April 29th-May 1st. If you have any additional questions or would like to sign up, you can email Ashley at [email protected] or check out our SHOP.
Hey everyone! Kimberlee here, getting back into the swing of things after taking 2 days off… so strange, even though I haven’t been gone for too long, it FEELS like I’ve been gone for about a month! I’ve missed all the gals in the office, and it’s good to be back. (I had a great little weekend vacation though, to visit a friend in the Pacific Northwest – it was so beautiful up there this weekend!) 🙂 Ok, anyway… getting back to the studio, I’m really excited about our new “Studio Stories” on our Youtube channel, and I’m really excited to share a little more of the behind-the-scenes happenings and random craziness that takes place here at our boudoir photography studio in San Diego. So as I’ve been gearing up for this week and getting ready to tackle some projects, somehow while going through all of my folders, I came across a few REALLY random videos that we never posted. Working on posting them later this week. Like this one below……….
Oh – AND – we’re doing a little drawing at the end of this week, prize to be announced later… one random winner will be chosen out of the people who have SUBSCRIBED to our youtube channel! So go subscribe right now!!!!!!!!!!
SUBSCRIBE for the Divas’ channel on YouTube! (it’s the BEST boudoir photography youtube channel in the whole wide world!) 🙂
We’ve already told you guys how much we love Drop It Modern, but we had to share our newest backdrop from them! We LOVE it. It is so different than all of our other sets, and this now brings our studio to about 15 unique sets. As Kimberlee mentions in the video, we think it is important to constantly be adding and changing our sets to add value and options for our customers. This way they can come back for more shoots as well! 🙂
We also wanted to show you this new backdrop because we are bringing it with us to our PARIS workshops!. So if you are attending one of our two workshops (space still available for the second week, April 29th-May 1st!) then you will be able to use this beautiful “canary” backdrop to build your portfolio.
Do you have any Drop It Modern backdrops? Tell us which one is your favorite!
I opened my Facebook account and checked my messages the other day, something I rarely do as much as I should so I apologize to peeps who have written me on there, but anyway I had this amazing message. The kind of message that just lights up your day, your week, heck maybe even my month.
So here’s the message, I have taken out as much personal info as possible as “Miss A” has given me permission to blog this but I didn’t want to totally give away her identity. Our response to her was of sincere gratitude for sending us this kindhearted and honest letter. Wow, just wow. Thank you Lord for blessing when you least expect them. Maybe you all too can give her words of encouragement and any advice you may see fit. – M
Hi Marissa & Kimberlee,
You don’t know me, and I have never met you! But right now I find myself sitting and writing you (with my husbands encouragement as he finishes off supper!) and wanting to tell you a little bit about my story and why there are tears running down my face.
Oh where to start! I guess I should introduce myself, so hi, my name is A——, I love Jesus, my husband and photography (and many other things that don’t apply to this tale). A few months ago I got this idea in my head to give my husband a few sexy pictures of me for Christmas. The challenge is that its rather difficult to take great pictures of yourself like that! So I enlisted my aunt who is a great friend of mine, and even though she was scared and couldn’t believe I had talked her into to it, we found ourselves running around her bedroom in skimpy little outfits with a camera. The result was incredible! My husband was blown away, but better yet my aunt’s husband was astounded. Last spring their marriage of 17 rocky years almost blew up. But they pulled through and have been working hard at it since then. Her little album to him changed everything! Suddenly she felt sexy for the first time in years, and he found her new confidence incredibly attractive! Now they leave love notes on each other’s facebook walls, spend time together and even enjoy each other. Our God is good! And he used something as simple as a beginners try at boudoir photography to glorify Him
Right around that same time my husband and I moved from a small prairie town to a big mountainous city (I live in Canada by the way), because my husband and I are involved in ministering in prisons and felt an incredible call to follow the opportunity to be involved closely with a chaplain in K——-, BC. So within a couple of months we had quit our jobs, packed up and said goodbye to family and started a new life. God blessed my hubby with a job, but somehow I never found one, and after a lot of encouragement from my amazing man, we decided I would pursue starting up a photography business, with an emphasis on boudoir. Yup me, who has only ever done one shoot, and was a part of it! I had been doing other photography for quite a while, and knew it was something I loved doing, so before I knew it plans were in motion!
Originally it was going to be fairly low key, but suddenly I found myself accepted to apply for a grant and needing a business plan. Things snowballed as I realized that I was getting into this for real, and really wanting to make a difference in the lives of women.
So that leads me to you, in my research somehow I kept returning to the Boudoir Divas site. I must have looked at it every day for the last week, always finding something new!
However, then the fears also starting hitting, who was I to think that I could do something like this? I don’t have a studio, not even a house to do it in! I have no hair experience, and though I love makeup I haven’t done much on other people. And hold up, I only have a $500 dollar camera, 1 lens, no lighting let alone lingerie and sexy heels! Only a knowledge that this was something I was called to pursue. I kept finding myself struggling to trust God though, worrying that maybe I wouldn’t get any funding, maybe all these dreams were for nothing. Well today was one of those days. I knew I should be trusting God, but there were so many impossibilities and unanswered questions! So I started looking at boudoir photos and sites simply to get inspired and reaffirmed that that was what I was supposed to do. Well God led me back to your site. And then to the video of your studio and I was so surprised to see a psalm written on your wall. So I paused it and then noticed Prov 3:5-6 (Which has been a verse that has been a huge part of my life) and I almost started crying. I found myself heading out the door for a walk, and stopping on my knees crying out to God “I trust you, I have to trust you, I can’t do this on my own!” and this incredible peace came over me and I knew that I wasn’t doing it on my own. Well when I got back home God blessed me again, I became curious as to who these Boudoir Divas really were, and did they mean what they had on their office wall. I found your mission statement, and it blew me away. When my husband got home I grabbed his hand and led him over the computer where we both sat and read it over and over again. Tears streaming down both our faces as God confirmed again that he is the one who leads, and sustains.
And so I find myself writing you a massive note, smells of chicken wafting out of my kitchen as my man tells me supper is ready, and tears replaced by a smile. All this to say Thank You. It is incredible to know that I am not the only one God has called to do this, I am not alone. And he does provide in incredible ways! May you and the other girls be incredibly blessed for the work you are doing, and the encouragement you have been to me.
Love, Your sister in Christ
A.
we are going to take it to a whole new level. We have said in the past that we were going to video blog every other day, but the excitement of other major projects has held us back so now we are buckling down and re-committing. These video are going be more for our clients than anything else but will also give photographers a behind-the-scenes look into our studio and the shenanigans we get ourselves into. So ‘hold onto your hats and glasses, cuz this here is going to be the wildest ride in the boudoir wilderness!’ (Disneyland anyone? Oh wait how about ‘permanence sentados por favor’???) Anyway, here is our first “Studio Stories” Video which you can also subscribe to our new youtube channel and be notified when new ones are posted, if you like, at http://www.youtube.com/boudoirdivas. -M
LOVE these photos… LOVE the inspiration! Hope you all have a FABULOUS day. xoxo, Kimberlee
SOPHIA LOREN is the perfect inspiration for boudoir photography!
