Boy oh boy has it been a long time since I’ve created a blog post!! I’ve decided to make my first blog post in years because I wanted a way to share this with all of you. The other day I did a super impromptu morning feel-good session. It included yoga/stretching, some breath work, and guided meditation. I wanted to show you all how I start the week off right. This small 25-minute practice is such a game-changer for me. It literally has changed my life.
After sharing it with some of you last week I got a ton of positive feedback so I wanted to make sure that those that missed it or wanted to do it again could have access. Hence the post!!
If you want to ease anxiety, stir up creativity, and wake your body and mind up, find a quiet space and watch the video.
Are you an aspiring boudoir photographer? Then this Free Online Boudoir Workshop Course is for you.
Hey, Marissa Boucher here. I own The Boudoir Divas, which is a boudoir studio in San Diego, Ca AND now Nashville, TN. We have been in business for 15 years and photographed more than 3500 women. Some flying to us from all over the world.
We believe that boudoir is the most rewarding job. It’s purposeful (most importantly)…. and profitable. And here’s the thing, we believe every woman should have a boudoir shoot. And for that reason we ALSO believe that there is PLENTY of business to go around. That’s why we don’t shy away from showing you ALL of our boudoir shooting, posing, business and marketing secrets!
I thought it would be fun to show you the first course of our online boudoir workshop…. for free! This is 1 or 8 courses, and I love it because it gives you a real idea of what it’s like in our studio.
Some things you may notice is that we have an amazing space… but that’s not necessary for boudoir photography. In fact we just recently closed down that big studio to be more mobile! Now we rent space and do what we call “Pop Up” Boudoir Studios in different cities. So both options work wonderfully. In fact I even know people that primarily just photograph boudoir in the outdoors.
If you are just starting out, here are some key areas to focus on.
Get VERY comfortable with your camera. A professional doesn’t struggle with settings often. Learn to shoot in manual mode and really understand how shutter, aperture and ISO work together.
Learn how to find flattering light, or create flattering light in any situation. We don’t always get to work in controlled environments, so it’s key to know where and how to find flattering light. I even bring a light with me if I know I will be shooting in a space that I’m not super familiar with.
Memorize 12 go-to poses so that if you have a day where your brain is just struggling (we all have those days) you will be prepared! We love this too because not having to stress about posing allows you to focus on client and give them the best boudoir experience possible.
Build your portfolio. Practice on any friends or models that will let you. It takes awhile to get really comfortable shooting boudoir, so you’ll want to practice. And… I doubt you will get a lot of bookings if your profile only has images of the same few clients.
A business model that works for you. Before you fully launch, make sure you run all the numbers and your expenses. And NOT just your business expenses. You will need to know how much to make for your paycheck as well. No point in having a fun and rewarding career if it doesn’t pay the bills!
Those are just a few ideas to getting started!
And if you need help… I’m here for you! We have an entire shop dedicated to all our boudoir resources.
And if that wasn’t enough, we also have Marissa’s World! This all access membership gets you a NEW valuable episode every month for just 16! Here we want to create new Episodes, that are tutorials shot in a more fun reality style, all geared towards those that photograph women.
Thank you for stopping by our blog. Keep looking around, we have TONS of valuable info on here!
Through the years we’ve created recipes & systems that we know will work with every client. As we said before, we learned the hard way with posing at first, and learned quickly what did and didn’t work for most clients. It took a lot of trial and error (and experimenting with some very gracious friends) before we learned which poses are the absolute best for boudoir.
THREE MUST-DO POSES:
We actually have 17 all-time FAVORITE poses that we know just plain work for all women, no matter what body type. We even named them, so that we could remember and reference them during our shoots. And the awesome thing is that these are not just poses that look good – they are ones that our clients always buy! (If you wanna see all of our 17 fave poses, go check out our Posebook). For today, though, we wanted to share with you 3 examples of our top boudoir poses – these are ones that you absolutely MUST do in each and every boudoir shoot!
MELISSA
This is such a classic, one that we do for every single client. This pose is super flattering on everyone, and it’s easy to get a lot of variety within this pose too. Be sure that you set up your client at a bit of a diagonal angle, so that her upper body is closer to the lens and her lower body and legs are a bit farther away.
TRISHA
This is an easy transition pose after the Melissa… all you need to do is ask your client to flip over on her stomach! Notice on this shot we have our client in the same angle (diagonal, with upper body in foreground). We also ask our clients to roll on their hip/side just a tad, rather than being completely flat with their stomach on the ground or bed. This makes sure that there’s a nice ‘pop’ to her hip and booty, showing off some awesome curves.
LAURA
Ok, now lastly, we wanted to share our “Laura” pose with you – but I’m not going to explain this one, because we actually have this one for you available to WATCH! The video below shows how we work with a client and coach her through this pose. *NOTE: this is a ‘preview’ of our online Posing Class… so the 1st minute gives a couple of glimpses of our posing tips. Skip ahead to about 1:15 to watch us demo the “Laura!”
So if you follow us, you know that our Online Workshop was launched just last month. This means that you have instant access to all the content that we’ve taught at highly successful workshops here in San Diego (which we’ve recent;y replaced with our more intensive 5 day Retreats). We have just uploaded the boudoir business portion for all of our online attendees to watch, one of many, and we wanted to give those of you who are mulling over joining a “sneak peek” into this VERY informative section. This point we drive home more than any other point; “you could be the most sought after photographer on the planet, with gobs of money coming in, but if your money making machine isn’t tuned in, you could very well make more money sitting on your couch watching soap operas everyday.” We go through at length how to tune that in and how to write yourself a paycheck every month.
WATCH THE BOUDOIR BUSINESS SNEAK PEEK….
We would love for you to join us and be a part of this online workshop. Click her for more info about everything we offer in the instant workshop….
Ahhhhh!!!! Can you believe it is FINALLY HERE!? Only 5 more days until the first lessons are released for the Online Boudoir Workshop! The first 2 lessons we’re releasing are:
You guys, we are SOOOO excited about these 2 lessons! Here’s a little teaser of what’s included in the posing lesson…
So in honor of the release date coming up, we’re going to be doing a fun little contest/giveaway every day leading up to the release date (Monday October 5th). For the next 5 days we’ll be giving away some prizes through a random drawing (out of all the photographers currently signed-up and pre-registered for the workshop).
AND THE WINNER IS…….. ROBERTA WELLS! Congrats, Roberta! We’ll be getting in touch with you soon to send this print to you.
Stay tuned, & keep checking back here with the blog through Monday to see the other prizes & winners. And it’s not too late to pre-register (and get $150 off the regular price!) Click here for more details. And don’t forget to use #ONLINEBOUDOIRWORKSHOP when you’re sharing about the workshop on Instagram! Can’t wait for you all to join us for the first 2 lessons on Monday. xoxo, K&M
So since we mentioned our past workshops, we thought it might be fun to share a little throwback to some of our very early workshops! Here are some pics from one of our VERY FIRST workshops, way back in 2008! I can’t believe we have been teaching workshops for 7 years, and that we have taught 252 photographers in those 7 years! We have been so lucky to meet each and every one of you. Our early workshops hold a special place in our hearts, because this was back in the days when the photography industry was still not totally on-board with the whole boudoir thing. Plus, we were 2 young things working and shooting out of a home & garage! We hosted the workshop in the home, and even though it was very tight quarters, we made it work. 🙂 Thanks to all of you photographers who came to one of our early workshops! 🙂
And then we can’t talk about the early days of our workshops without mentioning our first-ever PARIS workshop! This was such a cool experience for us, and obviously we loved it so much that we continued going back for 6 more years (and yes we’ll be going back again in 2016)! We loved this experience so much, in fact, that we decided to make a [crazy/silly/goofy/over-the-top/ridiculous/embarrassing] music video to share how excited we were about being in Paris. And our workshop attendees agreed to go along with our crazy plan and film it with us, hahaha!
And here are some of our fab 2009 Paris attendees, along with some little clips from the workshop itself:
Thanks again to all of you photographers who believed in us and traveled to hang out with us and learn about BOUDOIR! xoxo, K&M
Have you heard the news?! We are launching an Online Boudoir Workshop (FINALLY!!!) We’ve been talking about it for years, and it is finally happening. We are so excited to launch this, you guys. We’ve been filming already for the past month, and we have a few more filming dates coming up this month. We have a LOT of content to cover, and we’ve broken it all down into 6 different lesson. You can see all about the lessons, and more details, by clicking HERE.
We’ve had a lot of fun going over all of these lessons and planning what we want to share with you. Really it comes down to, how do you share 10 years’ worth of info into 6 lessons?! Seriously, TEN years! We are so lucky to have had such an incredible journey with what is called The Boudoir Divas. We’ve been given the opportunity to take beautiful photos of thousands of women, helping them see themselves in a new way and instilling confidence in them. We’ve had the honor of sharing our passion with over 200 of you, our photographer friends, who took the time and made the investment to travel to one of our Workshops or Retreats, either in San Diego, Paris, or Las Vegas.
We are truly thankful for all of these opportunities that we have been given, and we are SO very thankful to all of you, our awesome past attendees. And as a way to say thank you, we wanted to offer a huge discount to any of you past attendees who have come to a Workshop or Retreat. The regular price of the Online Workshop will be $645, but we are giving it to you for just $195!
PAST ATTENDEE SALE DETAILS:
If you’re a past Boudoir Divas Workshop or Retreat attendee & you want in on our Online Workshop, all you need to do is post a quick photo or note on social media (preferably on Facebook or Instagram). The photo can be anything you want, but we’d love to have you write:
1) Which Workshop or Retreat you were at
2) What you liked about it
And that’s it! Be sure to use the hashtag: #onlineboudoirworkshop and TAG US so that we see your post! (FB: TheBoudoirDivas or INSTY: @TheBoudoirDivas)
When we see your post, we’ll be in touch with a code that you can use to get access to the Online Workshop for just $195 total (normal price is $645, so HELLO that is $450 OFF!) *Can’t be combined with any other offers or discount codes. 🙂
If you’d like to see more about what we’re going to be offering in the Online Workshop, take a look at the video below.
Hey friends! If you’re visiting us today on this here ‘lil blog, then you will notice that some things are QUITE different around here! We are so excited about our the re-launch of our main website and our Boudoir International site! Take a look around, and let us know what you think. We also have to give a huge shout-out to our awesome web guy Kyle, for putting up with us and all our changes and crazy requests, and for making our vision come to life.
Also be sure to check out the updated B.I. site – it has an awesome new look & we just love the way it shows off our amazing member photographers! (If you’re interested in joining, click here!)
