Properly Exposed Boudoir

Posted by David

As a new feature to the blog, I'll be offering up some self critiques on images, explaining why I love the images that I do and things that I wish I could have changed or made better. It's a process that I try to go through with every shoot. Once we're all done and it's my turn to go through images, I like to make a short list of things that I need to work on heading into the next shoot. It's a holdover from my days at the Academy of Arts and it plays a big part in why I've progressed so quickly with photography.

Let's lead into this shoot with my favorite shot of the day.

The light in this image wrapped around Chelsea so beautifully, leaving a gorgeous little shadow that defines the edge of her cheek bone and then ends in a little point on her chin. It's that interplay between dark and light that I love so much about off camera lighting. That shift from dark to light, otherwise known as chiaroscuro, continues throughout the image. Light on the arm, dark shadow, light on the jaw, shadow, light on the plane of the face, dark blouse where the curve of the face ends, light on the right shoulder.

The one thing that really kills me about this shot is the lack of a catch-light in her eyes. That little extra glimmer would have really made this image pop. That said, there's so much going for this shot, including Chelsea's natural beauty, that I can't complain too much.


Here we have Chels in a stunning business suit that shows just enough to tantalize.

Time to move to the bed. One of the nice things about having a husband and wife shooting team is that glances like these come across as entirely genuine because more than likely Chels was looking at me while Mel caught this shot.


Chelsea is great at the 'come hither' look.

A little implied can go a long way.


I wish we could take credit for this concept, but it was all Chelsea. She saw our cyc wall and said, "There's this shot that I've always wanted to do." It wasn't something we were set up to do, and it was a shot I'd never tried before with the lights but I'm always willing to give a concept a try, especially if the model is willing to be patient with me while I fiddle with f-stops.

As it turns out, Chelsea has some other outfits that she'd like to play with some time in the future, so if we're all lucky, we'll get to see her again.

Makeup By: Painted Chic Makeup Artistry