You’ve done the scary bit. You’ve stood in front of my camera in your underwear (or considerably less!), trusted me to photograph you, seen the results and had that glorious “Holy shit, is that actually ME?” moment.
But then what?
Where do your boudoir photographs actually go? Who gets to see them? How should you look after them? And how do you make sure they don’t end up lost somewhere between a new phone, an old laptop and a cloud account you haven’t logged into for five years?
Let’s talk about what happens to your photographs once your boudoir session is over.
Do My Boudoir Photos Have To Be Shared Online?
Absolutely not.
If you’re happy for me to use your photographs, I’ll ask you to sign a model release granting me permission to share them on my website, social media, in marketing or potentially enter them into photography competitions.
But that decision is entirely yours.
Some women are absolutely buzzing to have their photographs shared. They feel incredible, they’re proud of them and the thought of another woman seeing their images and thinking “Maybe I could do this too” makes them even more special. And yes, when you allow me to share your photographs, it genuinely makes my day because showing real women is how other women discover my work.
But there is never any pressure.
You can say no. You can also choose exactly which photographs you’re comfortable with me sharing. Some clients are perfectly happy for certain images to be published but prefer photographs showing their face to remain private.
Your body. Your photographs. Your decision.
Where Do Your Boudoir Photos Live Afterwards?
I archive the photographs from your session on my hard drives and keep them for as long as I’m reasonably able to do so.
But please don’t treat me as your forever backup plan! There will eventually come a time when older sessions need to be permanently deleted. And while I may still have your photographs in my archives, accessing an archived session and retrieving your images takes time, so there is an additional charge for this service.
Technology fails. Hard drives die. Phones disappear down toilets. Laptops spectacularly give up the will to live. Passwords get forgotten and cloud accounts get abandoned.
My biggest piece of advice? Never keep your photographs in just one place.
Save a copy to your computer, another to an external hard drive and, ideally, keep another securely in reputable cloud storage. That way, if your laptop dies or your external drive decides it’s had enough of this world, you haven’t lost the lot.
These photographs are something you’ll want to be able to look back on in 10, 20 or 30 years. Give them a fighting chance of actually making it there.
Once you’ve purchased and received your digital images, it becomes your responsibility to look after them.
This Is Why I Love Prints!
Digital photographs are awesome. You can keep them on your phone, look at them whenever you fancy and, if you choose, share them online. But there’s something digital photographs can’t quite replace.
An actual photograph.
A huge percentage of my clients choose printed photographs or a professionally printed album alongside their digital images, and I love that. An album doesn’t need a software update. It doesn’t care whether you’ve switched from Apple to Android. You don’t need to remember a password to open it and nobody is going to discontinue the operating system required to look at your own ass.
Twenty years from now, you can still pick it up and open it.
And these photographs deserve better than spending eternity buried amongst 14,000 screenshots and photographs of what you had for dinner. Don’t you agree?
Yes, You Can Put Your Boudoir Photos On The Wall
Please do.
And before you ask where on earth you’re supposed to display a huge photograph of yourself looking shit hot, the obvious answer is the bedroom. It’s personal. It’s your space. And there’s something pretty damn wonderful about regularly seeing a photograph of yourself where you look incredible.
We spend an extraordinary amount of time looking at ourselves and immediately finding something to criticize. A photograph you genuinely love gives your brain some rather different evidence.
Bedroom, dressing room, walk-in wardrobe, private bathroom, wherever feels right. Or hang your beautiful ass in the living room if you want to.
It’s your house.
Don’t Let This Be The Only Time You Do It
Here’s something else I think women should really consider: boudoir doesn’t have to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Personally, I think you should photograph yourself like this at least every few years. Because you will change.
Your body will change. Your hair will change. Your confidence will change. Life will happen. You might become a mom. Go through menopause. Lose weight. Gain weight. Fall in love. Fall out of love. Rebuild yourself. Get older. Get louder. Give considerably fewer fucks.
Women go through so many different versions of themselves, and we have a terrible habit of believing only one of those versions deserves documenting. Imagine having a beautiful album from your 30s. Another from your 40s. Your 50s. Your 60s and so on!
Not photographs documenting whether you became thinner or looked younger. Photographs showing who you were then.
Look After Your Photographs
So when your boudoir session is finished, don’t just download your photographs, look at them seventeen times, show your best friend and forget where you saved them.
Back them up. Print them. Frame them. Put them somewhere you can actually enjoy them.
And maybe, a few years from now, come back and do the whole thing again. Because your body isn’t a finished product that deserves photographing only when you think you’ve finally got it right.
It’s going to keep changing. Don’t be the woman who always wanted to book a boudoir session, but never quite did. I wrote about exactly this in Some Women Will Never Book a Boudoir Session, because there will always be a reason to wait and eventually, all that waiting becomes never.
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