the most common fear or misconception clients have about doing an erotica session.
Erotica photography is such an intimate and vulnerable experience for the people in front of the lens and behind it. Erotica photography in its own existence is a fight against the shame, and secrecy that society has put sexuality behind specifically womens sexuality.
By stepping into a safe space and claiming, presenting and engaging in your most intimate moments in front of another person you dismantle that shame and secrecy, because as brene brown has taught us shame thrives in the quiet and dismantles when its brought into the light.
When potential boudoir or erotica clients come to The boudoir studio, each and every one of them has fears, questions concerns and doubts about the experience and mostly about themselves.
When we think about these concerns most people think base level, can I get a boner? What if I get hard? What if I finish too fast? My O face isn’t pretty. What if we aren’t kinky? What If I can’t stay hard? What if I squirt? Can I bring toys?
Theres an abundance of questions about erotica and most of the concerns are the same for everyone. Erotica photography IS NOT EASY. Its not, because intimacy and vulnerability are fragile, they require expertise, understanding, listening, and deep desire to allow people to be seen just as they are as THEMSELVES.
and the truth is, most people, let alone most photographers, have no idea how to do that. They have a vision, a plan but most of all… an expectation.
And that there is the BIGGEST and most common fear people have about an erotica photography session.
The expectation.
The expectation from society, the expectation from themselves, the expectation of what an erotica photography session looks like, and the expectation from the photographer of what photos should look like and what intimacy should look like. And the reason these expectations exist is because we've all been molded from the beginning of our lives to have these ideas of what intimacy looks like.
Unless you've been able to dismantle these ideas and these stereotypes and believe and work through the fact that everybody's intimacy is different because everybody is different and there's no right way and there's no wrong way. (Unless it's harming someone, illegal, nonconsensual, etc.)
So what I've realized is that the biggest fear that people have when reaching out is the expectation and the idea that they are not adequate or the idea that they are too weird or too vanilla or not enough of something. My clients and potential clients all come to me with this fear that they won't live up to the expectation of what is needed to have this kind of session and what is needed to have an incredible erotica session and have an incredible intimacy, and the thing that they're missing is that they already have it and that I'm just there to capture it and help enhance it and to teach them to embrace it and most of the time it scares them. But one of my favorite quotes in the whole world is Nothing great ever comes from your comfort zone. And as I stated earlier, shame thrives in the darkness.
I help my clients overcome this fear by working with them through it in chats, with assignments, activities and education. Becoming a certified sexologist helped me dismantle the beliefs, stereotypes, shames, expectations and views of what intimacy should be and allowed me to learn how to curate, accept, explore and navigate all types of intimacy without judgement, but most importantly.
With curiousity and the desire to understand and showcase the beauty of all intimacy.
