Photography that's just for you
If you have decided on a boudoir/art nude photography experience, the first thing you will hear from me is that best way to approach these shoots is to focus on the experience as one for yourself first and foremost. There are a lot of reasons why I think this is the best approach.
Your relationship with your body is personal
Most of us have complex relationships with our bodies. These shoots are focused on exploring, documenting, and celebrating your body and self, and in order to do this in an authentic way, I think it’s important that we approach the shoot for yourself first. You decide what you want to wear, or not wear, colours, themes and props that shout out your personality and attitude! These shoots are focused around what you want to do and seek your permission and collaboration every step of the way. Sometimes when we are doing something with someone else in mind, we start to focus on what we think they might prefer – what’s ironic is that I haven’t yet come across a partner who was not blown away by seeing authentic photos of their loved ones!
How do you feel about taking time for yourself?
We are caregivers, workers, partners, mental load holders and friends. Most of us devote so much time to others that we rarely have time for ourselves, this has the side effect of often creating guilt about choosing to take time out and do something for ourselves. This lack of self focus has a lot to do with the evolution of traditional gender roles, as women have become more involved in the workforce they still take on the greater proportion of the domestic load. And yes, the 2022 Australian Census has sadly backed this up, yet again. The good news is that if you’re in a same sex relationship, you are more likely to share house tasks more equally. What this can mean is that we often feel that in order to do something it should be focused around someone else. It’s not to say that your household reflects this research, but it’s one of the reasons why we can struggle to give ourselves permission to do things for ourselves. So if you would like a photography experience, give yourself permission!
But, I want to do something for my partner!
Absolutely, I get it! I love my partner too and would want to share my photos. There is a difference between sharing or gifting something you have done for yourself first, and doing something with the other person as the primary motivation. This is not to say that clients haven’t woven in jokes or references to their partner in their shoots. I understand how important your partner is and what a big part of your life they are – but the focus of your experience should always be yourself first.
Let's explore a different gaze
I’ve written a few articles on the male gaze and how it has monopolised photographs of women. Simply put, many representations of women are created to excite a straight male audience and objectify women. Women are represented as objects of sexual desire, as props with no other value. Many photos are also heavily distorted and hyper airbrushed. Often our ideas around beauty or sexiness are influenced by these types of photos as they dominate our visual world. As such if we are thinking about doing a shoot for our partner, we may put more focus on mirroring these types of representations. This can prevent us from exploring what may be more authentic to us and more challenging of the norm. This is not to say that if you choose to create photos for yourself these types of objectifying photos won’t influence you – they still influence me despite thinking and talking about this often! I will, however, always encourage you to step outside your comfort zone to embrace creating photos that are uniquely you and look to explore a different gaze.
An evolving conversation
Photographs of women are an evolving conversation, get involved and decide how you want to be seen. Let’s create healthy, quirky, strong, experimental, sexy, funny, powerful and personality filled photographic representations that embrace our differences and broaden the representation of women.
