CHAPTER ONE
Getting Started
Women of all ages, shapes,
and sizes want to look
and feel beautiful.
GETTING STARTED 7
Photography has always been my passion. Boudoir photography is one as-
pect of the art that has ignited all of my senses and continues to keep this
business exciting.
I have found over the years that women of all ages, shapes, and sizes
want to look and feel beautiful. Many things go into creating the master-
piece of the woman. The Hollywood actresses and models of today look
much different in the real world. Makeup artists, clothing designers, digi-
tal artists, and others help create the stunning finished product we see on
screen or in print. A woman who agrees to have a boudoir photography
session is your clay. You are the sculptor who will help shape and mold that
raw material into something beautiful, timeless, and artistic. The photog-
raphy techniques covered in this book will teach you how to create the
highest-quality portraiture possible in the industry today. The sales and
marketing techniques covered in this book will help you operate a suc-
cessful studio that allows you to make a living doing what you love.
In this book, I’ll discuss several enhancing skills:
- Makeup and wardrobe
- Posing and lighting
- Digital finishing and printing
Finding Clients.
The question most photographers ask is: how do I get women to want to
have a boudoir/glamour session?
Existing Clients.Over the years, I have used several different tech-
niques to book these sessions. The most cost-effective form of advertising
is to market to the people who are already in the studio. My studio pho-
tographs hundreds of high school senior girls. Their mothers are my tar-
get audience. Mom is watching her daughter’s session and she is getting
caught up in the excitement of the event. If I feel that a mom may be open
to tasteful boudoir portraiture, I’ll show her a slide show of previous
clients. This can be done while I finish her daughter’s session, during out-
fit changes, or after the session when her daughter is packing up her clothes