When clients book a boudoir session, they find that they book a whole experience. Eva wanted a few pretty pictures to help her feel like a model in a magazine. “I want to look hot,” she told me when she contacted me. I told her my vision, she loved it, she booked me, the only thing, she wanted to do the session while she was in a girls trip in Cancun.
This her story.
Eva found Glamour Architects the way most of my clients do, late at night, phone in hand, talking herself in and out of it for longer than she’d admit. She wasn’t nervous about the camera. She was nervous about what it meant to want this for herself.
Eva grew up in a conservative family, in a very religious tight knit community. She had spent years being everything to everyone else and had quietly shelved a part of herself away. Eva wanted to feel pretty and sexy, without feeling guilty. She wanted to see herself the way she admired models in a magazine. They looked uninhibited, free, powerful.
My boudoir website found its way to her and decided that’s what she wanted for herself; to feel womanly and sensual. She liked my work and in our conversation she told me about her conservative family and community and how she would prefer to do the shoot out of town to feel more relaxed. Cancun was the gorgeous destination of choice and those images and that experience became my first of Boudoir Destination Sessions and that has taken me to shoot all over the States as well as Mexico, Paris and Italy.
I’ve worked as a professional makeup artist at New York Fashion Week, on red carpets, and on set for television. I know what transformation looks like under pressure and hot lights. There’s something different about destination boudoir work. The distance a woman puts between herself and her daily life becomes part of the magic.
When I shoot, I show up with a camera, a full make up kit, light hair styling, posing guidance, and the kind of energy that makes even the most camera shy woman forget she was ever nervous. My clients don’t have to coordinate a glam team and a photographer. I am the glam team and the photographer. I also work with pro makeup artists when I am in studio, but with destination its usally my self. One person, one vision, one seamless experience whether we’re in a studio in CA., or on a balcony in Cancun.
We split the trip into two very distinct experiences, and looking back, that structure made all the difference.
The Glamour Boudoir Session: She Came to Feel Like a Magazine Model
Amy reserved a full day for the boudoir shoot — hair, makeup, wardrobe, and all of it. She had spent years looking at images in magazines and quietly thinking, that’s not for women like me. We were going to dismantle that belief one frame at a time.
I walked her through every pose. I told her where to put her chin, what to do with her hands, how to breathe. (Yes, breathe. You’d be surprised how many women forget to breathe in front of a camera.) By the end of the session she wasn’t following my directions anymore she was giving energy. The camera caught all of it.
That’s what a well guided boudoir shoot does; It allows women to have fun and feel at ease with poses and movement and that brings joy, sensuality and confidence.
After the glamour session was wrapped, we took a swim in the ocean, had food and made our way back to the room to relax. Anna looked happy, relieved; she had a glow. The light hit her just right and I grabbed my camera. I didn’t want these images of her posed, I wanted to capture her exactly as she appeared at that moment in that specific time. To see through my eyes that she looked like, the physical embodiment of sunset. No glam, makeup, or, poses. Just a woman in her element, sun-drenched and golden, moving through her day with out anyone telling her to cover up, or to not look so “American.”
Unplanned the lifestyle shoot became a documentary style shoot; moody and candid. All that was needed was her phenomenal mood and that Magical Hour sun-light.
These frames weren’t planned, however, they turned out to be the ones she couldn’t stop staring at.
“I feel more confident. More womanly.”
That was it. Simple as that. And it hit different than any compliment about my editing ever could.
She boarded that plane wanting to feel like a model in a magazine. She landed having discovered something quieter and more lasting: that she was magnetic before the makeup went on, and the camera could see it even when she couldn’t.
This is exactly why I do this work. I spent years in makeup and on set understanding the technical craft of beauty. But photography gave me something makeup alone never could — the ability to show a woman herself. Her actual self. Not the version she performs for everyone else.
I believe women need to see themselves through their own lens. Not their mother’s lens. Not their partner’s lens. Not Instagram’s lens. Their own.
That’s what Glamour Architects is built for.
Glamour Architects is Southern California’s luxury boudoir photography studio, proudly serving the Inland Empire, Los Angeles, Pasadena, Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, Riverside, San Bernardino, and beyond. Sessions begin at $599 and include professional hair and makeup.
Your future self will thank you. Reserve your session today.
Photographer and pro Make up artist I create cinematic photography experience, tailored to re-intriduce you to your fearless, gorgeous, pre stress you. For women who want to find and re-ignite their fire.
