Bright Boudoir with Stephanie {30 photoshoot speedlight challenge #15}

Stephanie came to me because she wanted to make a boudoir calendar. She never thought about being a model before. But man, she is a natural. She also did her homework. I told her, like I tell all others, to think about what poses she wants to do before the shoot. She just busted it out. Bam bam bam, 30 percent were just wonderful, beautiful, publishable photos. In 3 hours, we were able to capture 6 sets.

This was also my first brush with boudoir photography. Don't get me wrong, this is not a paradigm of boudoir photography. Sure, my lovely scantily clad model effectively entices the camera, but it doesn't have the retro, curvy, moody lighting that commercial boudior photography has. It is interesting I went this direction when I consider myself a creative lighting photographer. You thought I would try to be more.... dim.

She wanted to do costumed shoots that coorespond with different months of the year. I think we effectively captured 6 of them.

Click here to view more excellent photos of Stephanie

I also had perhaps an unnecessary concern about making all the photographs look unique. You see, we were doing all the sets, one right after another, on my dining room floor. With the same lighting setup, I was concerned that all the photos would look the same. And they did, to some extent, but I tried to mitigate this problem in photoshop. I think I handled this quite fairly with our halloween segment. The photoshoot has the same shadowing as the rest of the sets, but I brought the temperature down a few notches on the raw file.


Stephanies decision to put the handcuffs in the foreground was excellent. She really thought of composition and everything.

I colored in the floor solid red. I liked how it contrasted with the cool temperture. I like this a lot. My only concern is that the story may not make sense. I had a sheet on the ground to breakup my wood floor texture just in case I had a hard time editing it out. I used a more subtle red effect in this shoot, but I'm not sure if less editing made the shoot more cohesive.

Less editing makes a better story? I'm not so sure.

The next boudoir costume was Easter themed. Her costume for this was great and I wanted to take a lot of lengthwise shots. Since I anticipated the calendar being an 8.5" by 11 I edited a few of the lengthwise images together to make this little compilation. I think its ADORABLE. Its like she is multiplying like RABBITS. Get it?

Multiplying like rabbits he he he

Although I am always hesitant about editing out shadows, which can often be more beautiful and interesting than the models themselves. Except not in this case, Stephanie is crazy beautiful.

But the shadows were so beautiful!

Another problem with excellent body shots is that I sometimes miss out on the little features. The zoomed out shots don't really give her bow tie justice.

The pretty details are revealed in the close up shot. Her lace bodice and bow tie really pop here.

S. posed with a soccer ball for a summer time game theme

St. Patricks Day set.

How could I not love an American beauty inspired set. I didn't have the equipment to get a perfectly square overhead shot, but I think the side photos are amazingly beautiful. The super soft lighting in these scenarios work perfectly, beautifully.

So the next set is sort of a boudoir LMFAO set. I really wanted to get away from some of my other backgrounds so I tried to do something a little more creative with taking out the backgrounds with fancy photoshop isolation and using my handy dandy replace tool to take out the background.

I think this photo came out well

The next photo I like because of the Vargas girl pose and the falling out of the air look its given her.

Stephanie asked, "can I see it with the chair?" but I like this one better.

The Christmas set was my favorite. Her skin tone and hair color matched perfectly with her costume and the color correction made a perfect ice queen quality to these photos. I think if she only uses one set from her shoot with me, these will end up being the ones. I am showing a lot of photos from this set perhaps because I think these are some of my best work

Stephanie's body pose is perfect here

This is another photo I find close to perfect.

I love the pose Stephanie is striking for this one. This is easily my favorite photo.

The 30 Photoshoot speedlight challenge is a Self Challenge where I attempt to learn as much as I can about lighting. Read more about the 30 photoshoot challenge and follow my journey by clicking on the links below.