Boudoir: Business and Critiques

Jen Rozenbaum, speaking from the New York bedroom where she started her boudoir business in 2008, introduces her three-day CreativeLive workshop covering customised boudoir sessions, posing flow, posing for all women and marketing to bring clients in, aimed at newcomers and established boudoir photographers alike.

Ewan Phelan, in a clip from CreativeLive's Photo Week, demonstrates how he prepares a client for a boudoir session. Recognising that nervous clients struggle to relax in front of the camera, he shows his approach to directing them, talking them through the shoot and building comfort and trust.

Michael Sasser answers a viewer's question about what he would do differently if he were starting his boudoir business from scratch, before having a website or shooting a first session. He sets out five changes a beginner should make early on, including how to find models to practise with.

Michael Sasser tours his boudoir studio: a street-level room for hair, make-up and print sales, and upstairs bedroom, living room and dining sets. He hangs cheap sheers on compression rods to soften window light, times direct sun with the Sun Seeker app, and recalls starting in a Denver house.

Michael Sasser critiques viewers' boudoir images, praising a student's S-curve pose with space behind the back and a city view, while suggesting separating the feet, levelling hips that drop when a knee rests on a sofa, adding back arch for shape, and cropping to straighten a distracting top line.

Michael Sasser answers subscriber questions from Italy: model trade shoots earn him nothing; prices can rise incrementally from $200 sessions or in one leap, as Alex Chalkley did to $1,500; and nervous first-timers relax when he acts the professional, reads body language, makes them laugh and shows good frames.

Michael Sasser works through thirty boudoir photographs chosen from over seventy subscriber submissions, declining private Instagram critiques. Recurring notes include a bar intersecting the head, crossed feet, a too-tidy bed needing a rumpled duvet, orange toning, hands caught between positions, and a disorienting tilt a straightening crop would cure.

Michael Sasser performs phrases to avoid with boudoir clients: vague directions like be sexy instead of precise instructions, implying Photoshop will make them attractive, falling silent without warning, drawing attention to a botched frame, repeating one compliment, and touching without asking. He recommends explaining each move and asking permission.

Michael Sasser revisits his first boudoir pictures from 2011, shot in his apartment with one softbox, and picks apart flat lighting on a textured wall, a subject slumped on her chest with crossed feet and background luggage, cropped heads and hands, silhouettes hiding her shape and too-low camera angles.