of their husbands. Covering their bare breasts Victoria’s Secret style, each of
them stood defiantly in matching calf-high boots and red-and-black boy
shorts. “It’ll shock them, but they’ll love it,” Jennifer joked.
All three bought session books, a small album containing an entire set of
images from their session. In addition, we made three posters of their fa-
vorite image of the three of them together—one for each husband.
It just goes to show you, anyone—Veronica, Tonya, Barb, or Fawn and
her friends—could be a potential glamour client. All of these women had a
different reason for doing a glamour session. As a result, the final presenta-
tion of their images was also different—large portraits, session books, port-
folios, and glamour albums. Yet each woman had a similar goal: to create an
image that portrayed her femininity. They all wanted to be attractive, allur-
ing, and sexy—and they all were happy to pay for it.
So What is a Glamour Portrait?.
“We all want to look sexy and beautiful,” says glamour-portrait client
Tarina, “but not trashy.” There it is; if your goal is to add glamour portrai-
ture to your studio’s offerings, you need to understand this critical principal.
As a glamour photographer, your goal is not to stroke male fantasies (al-
though you’ll undoubtedly do that indirectly) but to help create your female
clients’ vision of what it means to her to be attractive and sexy—and that vi-
sion is almost never tawdry or pornographic.
That’s why my studio calls our images glamour portraits rather than
boudoir images. We made that decision after discovering that many of our
clients found the word “boudoir” kind of scary,
and the connotation... well, on the pornographic
side. In actuality there may be no difference be-
tween a glamour and a boudoir image, but clients
perceive boudoir images to be about sex for the sake of sex. If an image is
considered glamorous, however, its goal is perceived as the depiction of the
subject’s beauty, not her sexuality. It makes a big difference.
As a photographic genre, glamour is also more open. It can include im-
ages that go far beyond what falls into the boudoir category. Depending on
your client, glamour might include fashion-inspired headshots like you see in
magazines, curvaceous poses with the subject in a tight black dress, seduc-
tive images with lacy lingerie, etc. And if, to another woman, “glamour”
means lying naked under a waterfall with water splashing over her, that works
too.
The Beauty in Every Subject.
When you create a glamour portrait, you are actually helping your subject see
her own beauty and strengthen her self-image. “I can’t believe that’s me,”
Krystal said as I displayed her image on my camera’s LCD. “That’s not what
I see when I look into the mirror.” That’s because, like many women, she was
concentrating on what she perceived as her flaws.
10 MASTER GUIDE FOR GLAMOUR PHOTOGRAPHY
When you create a glamour portrait, you are
actually helping your subject see her own beauty.