A photographer reached out to me through social media asking me to shoot with him sometime. Although I’d love to have a shoot for myself, does this seem sketchy? He’s taken photos for friends i know and they said he seemed cool and laid back. They also mentioned that he took a while to send them their pictures and wouldn’t respond before sending them. Anyway, just wanted to hear some thoughts on this.
As a male photographer who has mostly commercial clients (events/corporate) that pay way more than boudoir and would like to explore boudoir photography I find it’s very difficult to even get clients for boudoir without a portfolio so you would definitely need to do a few for free or at least low priced.
I feel most women simply only want to work with a female photographer and I’ve seen women not be great at photography for all the things you just listed above. Also the women I’ve seen who do boudoir definitely share and post the content all over their social media and the shoots are just as tasteless, with trashy sexual poses no different from their male counterparts.
So when it comes down to it, doesn’t seem like a skill thing. Just a matter of “well at least the photographer is a female capturing me.”
Oh, NO DOUBT there are some shittastic female boudoir photographers out there. I follow one mainly because she keeps stealing our interiors photos to use to promote her sessions. Her lighting is fucking terrible and she knows fuck all about posing larger bodies. There’s shitty photogs everywhere. But the female boudoir photogs usually aren’t sending sus texts after the session or trying to have a deeper relationship like the badly behaved male ones. There’s literally instagram accounts for models to keep track of which photographers are sketchy.
Why even bother doing boudoir? Like you said, commercial work pays way better and is less emotionally fraught. I shot a couple back when I did weddings and it was better than doing newborns but it’s not a genre that’s going to result in additional sales from other parties, and the client willing to invest 4 figures or more is kind of rare unless you have a super popular boudoir brand.
If it really “speaks” to you artistically then just hire a model. Much easier to make sure you’re getting what you need for your portfolio when you can call all the shots on styling, make-up, wardrobe, etc.
My biggest pet peeve with boudoir photographers is that a solid 95% cannot pronounce the word “boudoir” correctly. How is anyone supposed to take you seriously when you can’t even say what you do. If I hear “boo-door” one more time…
Haha I get you about the pronunciation of the word.
The thing is there’s creeps and weirdos on both sides women just make more noise about it. Men brush it off and keep it moving.
As for why do boudoir even if the pay isn’t as much, it’s not always about bread (money). If that was the case I wouldn’t take photos of half the things I capture, most of what I do is because I’m interested in it and I like the look of it so I want to freeze that moment. It’s no different with boudoir or capturing a beautiful woman. Inspiration starts with an interest, nothing wrong with that or admitting to it.
The whole label of men photographers being just in it to be creepy is lame, even the OP’s own friends vouched for the guy after having shoots with him.