In April I attended my first photography conference in a couple years. I had not been doing much with my photography since moving across country to take a professing job. One of the things that I can be extremely grateful for is a group of friends that are mostly photographers. They have all, with the exception of Koko, who started when I did, been in the industry for years. It came up for us to do our annual meet up because we live so far from one another around the time that one of us would be attending the True North Photography Workshop.

The schedule allowed us to do mentored photo sessions with other photographers in the industry. I chose do participate in an intimate couples session since there was not anything that was specifically boudoir related and I do not have as much experience with couples and I’m interested in expanding my offerings. 

Our session leaders, Jennifer Moher and Mari Trancoso, specialize in cinematic storytelling as their photographic style. This was a sort of new concept for me. They brought a mood board for us that had the muted tones of grainy cinema from the nineties and incorporated movement, out of focus shots, and some motion blur. They both talked about evoking emotion and even odd props. Our couple, Steph and Josh, were lovely and I was looking forward to photographing them.

I considered how to use my perspective for boudoir to create some storytelling that would be useful for my audience but also that would potentially challenge me to stretch my creativity. The use of colored lighting was definitely up my alley but, I won’t lie, I struggled a little. Especially because I’m an introvert working within a group of people. I found that I did not really connect with the story I wanted to tell until I started editing. The pictures made me think of Andrew Belle’s “Oh My Stars” which you catch the video of on my socials!