After photographing so many women over the years, I’ve started to notice a pattern. It doesn’t matter whether you’re 21 or 65+, whether you’ve had children or not, whether you’ve stepped in front of a camera a hundred times or have never had professional photographs taken in your life. Almost every single woman walks through my studio door apologizing for something.
It’s rarely about anything physical. Instead, women apologize for their nerves. They apologize for not knowing what to do with their hands, for feeling awkward, for laughing when they’re nervous or freezing when the camera appears. They worry they’ll be difficult to photograph, that they’ll take too long to relax or that they’ll somehow be my most challenging client. And without fail, one sentence seems to come up in almost every session: “I’m sorry, I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.”
What always surprises me is how quickly those apologies come. It’s almost as though somewhere along the way we’ve been taught that before anyone is allowed to really see us, we need to explain and apologize for a bunch of stuff!
What I’m Actually Seeing
The funny thing is, while you’re busy apologizing, I’m seeing something completely different. I’m not sitting there wondering whether you’re awkward or whether you’ll know how to pose. I’m watching someone who’s walked through the door and done something that feels genuinely scary. That takes courage, even if it doesn’t feel like it in the moment.
Those first few minutes of every session are some of my favorites to witness. I see shoulders slowly relax, nervous laughter turn into genuine laughter and tentative smiles become real ones. There’s always a moment when something shifts. You stop thinking about where your hands are, you stop wondering what I think of you and you start enjoying yourself. It doesn’t happen because you’ve suddenly become a different person. It happens because you stop worrying about whether you’re doing it “right” and start enjoying the experience instead.
You’re Not The Only One
One of the biggest misconceptions about boudoir photography is that all the women you see in the finished photographs arrived feeling confident. They didn’t.
Many of the women whose images you see on my website nearly cancelled. Some sat in the car for a while before coming in. Others told me they hardly slept the night before because they were convinced they’d be my most awkward client. Almost every one of them believed everyone else probably found this easy, and they were the odd one out.
The truth is, they weren’t. They were simply experiencing exactly what almost every woman experiences before doing something that’s completely outside her comfort zone.
The Goalposts Keep Moving
Personally, I think we spend far too much of our damn lives waiting until we’re fucking “ready.”!! We tell ourselves the same bullshit on repeat. Have you read my previous blogs on why some women never book a boudoir session or the things we think other people will think? The problem is, those goalposts have a habit of moving. As soon as one thing changes, something else takes its place.
Before long, months become years, and years become decades (and that’s that hard, cold truth!). All the while, we keep believing the next version of ourselves will somehow be more worthy of celebrating than the woman we are today.
You Never Needed To Apologize
If there’s one thing photographing so many women has taught me, it’s this: the version of yourself that’s standing in my studio is already enough. Let me repeat that…
The version of yourself that’s standing in my studio is already enough!
You don’t need to know how to pose because that’s my job. You don’t need to arrive overflowing with confidence because very few women do. You don’t need to have all the answers or know exactly what you’re doing. AND you certainly don’t need to apologize for feeling nervous.
So, if you’re thinking about booking a boudoir session and you’ve already started making a list of reasons why now isn’t the right time, I’d love you to remember one thing. Every woman who’s walked through my studio door has felt some version of what you’re feeling now. They’ve worried they wouldn’t be good at it. They’ve wondered if they’d made the right decision. They’ve apologized for their nerves before we’d even begun.
Not one of those apologies was ever necessary.
Before you go…
If you’ve stumbled across this blog for the first time and you’re only just discovering me and the shit hot work I get to do with women, then don’t feel like you have to jump straight into booking a session.
Come and get to know me first.
Follow along on TikTok for plenty of laughs, honest conversations and a glimpse into what actually happens during a boudoir experience. It’s probably the quickest way to work out whether I’m your kind of person!
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