Love Rewards the Brave | St. Louis Boudoir Photography

One of my favorite niches of photography has gotta be Boudoir. Most people can’t even pronounce it (bo͞oˌdwä), let alone know what it is. It’s actually a French word meaning a woman’s bedroom or private room or literally a “sulking place.” Now, photographers photograph ladies in their dainties and it’s called boudoir! I’ve had a handful of courageous girls brave enough to do it, and they are always so incredibly happy they did. But the real treat is for that special someone on the receiving end. Many of my gals give an album to their fiancé as a wedding gift, some as a first anniversary gift for “paper” and others just have prints made for themselves. 🙂 After a session, no matter how proud of the images they are, they usually aren’t going to let me post their session on my blog, darn it! So, lucky me, my spunky + smokin’ hot recent bride, Becky, was totally game to model for a styled film shoot I had up my sleeve. #girlcrush

Every image on my blog is digital, except for this shoot. I know everyone is doing it, blah, blah, blah, but I had to see for myself. I learned the basics of film photography and processing in college; at that time there really wasn’t an option to shoot digital. I didn’t even have a camera phone at that time! I was playing Snake on my Nokia, just learning this new thing called “texting” with my roommate whose bedroom was right across from mine. 😉 So a few weeks back, I rented a Contax 645 and started reaching out to other talented Midwest vendors to get involved in this shoot.

Have you ever been to that cute little lingerie boutique in Webster Groves called Sugar Magnolia? Well, these adorable sweet pieces are from that shop! They specialize in bra fittings and are the perfect one-stop-shop for bridal lingerie! The entire shoot, including the signage, was inspired by the truth phrase, “Love Rewards the Brave.” We also used a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald, “I love her and that’s the beginning and end of everything.” (I’ve been obsessed lately with novels form the 1920’s, so it was perfect!) The amazingly talented Courtney Callahan (another recent bride of ours!) with Courtney Callahan Paper (a St. Louis native, but now resides in Chicago) hand-made the fabric banners. The quotes were die-cut and ironed on to look as if they were printed directly on the fabric. We then attached the pretty flower swags, created by Bloomin’ Buckets, a fantastic floral designer here in St. Louis. She used an assortment of flowers including dahlia, ranunculus, seeded eucalyptus and fern.

Oh mmmm geee, the hair + make up. I have worked with Annie from Daniellestyle several times! But I’ve never had her following me around a shoot changing things up with every look. That was fun – Annie is awesome! The antique benches were borrowed from Maplewood Galleries and I also incorporated a veil from the sweet ladies from Fleur De Lis Bridal Boutique.

So a few things I learned that you might notice in the images … I’ve got to practice on my focusing! The Contax is really hard to manually focus, especially when I’m facing the sun and sweating. I still love the images even with the slight blur – it almost adds to the secret seductive look of boudoir, yeah? I also didn’t retouch or edit the images in anyway. I could have brightened a few, but since these were my first rolls, I thought I would keep them as is. I just cleaned up the dust marks. Voilá!

Sooooo, what do you think? CAN YOU HELP ME TALK RYAN INTO BUYING A FILM CAMERA?! Hubbies! They are so practical and frugal. Please feel free to leave comments below for him to see.

Ladies! Can I get you on board? Let’s do this! I promise I won’t let you down. Remember, love rewards the brave!

xox

HSR