Traditionally December & early January are quiet for me, as people are either saving up for Christmas, or trying to lose weight after it, so it’s a good time of year for me to evaluate what I want to do with the coming year. It’s really important to me to remain creative, so I need to focus shooting things that inspire me. I’ve realised that one of the things I’m most passionate about is taking someone who’s never had a photoshoot before & showing them how great they can look, & for that reason I’m going to focus more on boudoir in 2014.
Women coming for boudoir shoots have generally never had a photoshoot before so they’re really excited about it, & I love that enthusiasm. They may be nervous, & have no experience of posing, but that makes it all the more rewarding when I transform them from frightened rabbit to sex kitten over the course of the shoot. You can see the change in confidence even before we start, when they see the difference my fabulous make-up artists have made. Hearing someone squeal with delight & say “This is the best I’ve ever looked” on seeing themselves in the mirror is a very encouraging sign 🙂
It really is all about being confident in front of the camera. I think that in these days of social media we all have cameras pointed at us from birth, that some people grow up with a natural aversion to them, probably based on snapshots taken at an early age. It becomes a circle of doom, each time you see a camera you don’t act natural, as you’re worried about previous bad photos, making the next one just as bad or worse. Also, outside of photoshoots, people only have one or two photos taken at a time, giving them very little time to get used to the camera. In a boudoir photoshoot I’ll take around 200 photos over more than two hours. This gives you plenty of time to get relaxed, plenty of time for me to work out your best angles, & as many chances as you need to get each shot right.
I believe that everyone is beautiful, & the key to great boudoir photography is finding out how to show each person’s beauty on camera. So many women don’t realise how fabulous they can look given the same standard of make-up, lighting & photography as the images they see every day in the media, & the absolute best feeling in my job is when someone walks away from the shoot with a new-found spring in their step having seen themselves in a new light. I’ve had so many lovely emails from people who’ve carried that confidence into their day to day life, so I’ve really helped make a change.
You can be really creative with boudoir as well. Everyone I shoot will have favourite clothes, jewellery or props with personal meaning to them, & there are so many styles of photography to play with, including burlesque, pin-up, art nude, film noir, glamour, fashion, that you can create a unique set of images each time.
So, if you, or anyone you know, would like to see a new side to themselves, email me using matt@mattchristie.com & help me make 2014 the year of the boudoir.
Matt
PS I’ll still be accepting other types of shoots, & I’ll also be shooting more erotic art to sell as prints, but more of that in another post.
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