096: Jessica Hill – Balancing Boudoir & Weddings + Easy Breezy Posing Tips

Well, the posing that I do for boudoir, my brand is Peekaboo Boudoir, and it’s a women for women based, so I’m working with women. So we have a lot of fun, there’s champagne, there’s fun music, I’m always being cheeky and fun and, “Oh girl, look at that booty, pop that booty, go ahead and bring your shoulders back and down.” But the one thing that ties, I think, the boudoir in with the weddings is allowing comfort and safety. So as soon as my boudoir clients show up, I let them know they’re in a safe place, they can trust me, I’ve got their back, I’m always going to make them look and feel their best, and I do a similar thing for my wedding or engagement photo clients, where I thank them for coming, I compliment them on their outfits, I reassure them that the weather is great, even if it might not be perfect, just giving them the confidence to move into having a really great, successful session where they feel like they’re in great hands.

Oh, that’s a good one. First I have them walk through the lingerie selection and I start the session off with the most amount of clothes. So if it’s maybe his dress shirt, or if it’s a one piece body suit, almost like a one piece bathing suit, I start there, then move into less and less and less and less so that they start feeling more and more comfortable with me. The first couple photos are sometimes throw away photos because they’re just like this, I’m testing lighting, I’m seeing how their body moves and what their natural tendency is.

So I usually start, like I said, with the most amount of clothes and then go further and further. But I give them a opening and I say, “Boudoir is about angles, so we’re really going to exaggerate the angles of your body. In some of the poses you might not feel sexy, you’re going to be like, how is this gorgeous? How is this even cute? I feel very awkward, but it’s actually photographing really, really well.” So it’s a lot of back arching, it’s a lot of lower back popping, it’s a lot of bringing the abs up and in, and relaxing the shoulders away from the ears and keeping the chin up so we don’t have that dreaded double chin look.

I tell them this before we start posing so they’re keeping that in mind, and then with hands I say, “We want to relax your hands, no stiff hands,” like robot hands. But I usually am prompting their hands to do something, to be purposeful. So holding the bra strap, or touching the hair, or grabbing the sheets, or something like that, I think that all of those things, from head to toe, are really important. Not having your toes straight up, I always say pointing the toes elongates the legs. It also has a tendency to elongate the torso, so it immediately brings everything up and in when you point your toes. So it’s just those little things that I’m looking for to make sure that my boudoir clients look and feel their best.

I think that, going back to the posing, I think one of the things that a lot of photographers shy away from is having two stiff of poses, or having poses that look too formal, and I think that couples want guidance in some way or another. I’ve second shot and I’ve worked with a lot of other photographers, and they just let their couples wander around and the couples are like, are we doing this right? We’re just walking. Just little amounts of guidance go a really long way, and it doesn’t have to be a pose, per se, but it’s just basically guiding your couple to make them feel confident and to make them put at ease and make sure you’re getting great photos.

So oftentimes if I’m going from one pose to another, one location to another, I’ll say, “Okay, make sure that you guys are holding hands when we’re walking from point A to point B,” because the dudes on his phone, she’s checking her lipstick, or something like that, and I’m like, just be walking so I can be capturing those candid moments. I oftentimes encourage couples to leave all their stuff in the car, or if I know they’ll have a lot of stuff I have an assistant with me who can carry it, so those candid moments from point A to point B, with guidance, my assistant is able to hold her purse, and their change of clothes, and the change of shoes, and all that stuff, so they’re not like this, and I’m trying to get beautiful candid moments of that time.

So candid moments can still have some guidance, and guided moments can also have a candidness. So I think that it’s a really beautiful symbiotic relationship, that it doesn’t have to be so stiff and rigid, and you can really do storytelling with posing.