Hi, I'm Brii, a North Carolina-based boudoir and women's portrait photographer. I've had the privilege of working with incredible women and couples from around the globe. With over a decade of experience and thousands of clients, I've seen the popularity of boudoir photography soar.

We all know a boudoir photo shoot can be a fantastic gift for a wedding, anniversary, or simply for yourself. Despite its growing appeal, I've encountered clients and even other photographers who aren't entirely clear about what boudoir photography truly entails. There's a bit more to the definition than you might think. If you're curious about what it's all about, you've come to the right place.

"So, what exactly is boudoir photography? While you can find various definitions online, it's surprisingly challenging to pinpoint an exact one. Today, we'll attempt to clarify the meaning of boudoir photography.

Boudoir photography is as defined by Wikipedia as of 9/17/24 : photographic style featuring intimate, sensual, romantic, and sometimes erotic images of its subjects in a photographic studio, bedroom or private dressing room environment, primarily intended for the private enjoyment of the subjects and their romantic partners.

But thats putting it super simply in all the ways.

Lets break it down the word boudoir is derived from French and means: a woman's bedroom or private room.

Then it somehow got linked to this idea of women in their bedroom or private room being “sexy”?
But the truth is boudoir has become outstandingly popular to a point that any photography of someone in little to no clothing is claimed to be “boudoir”

Depending on the photographer you ask each one is probably going to have a different outlook or way of viewing boudoir. That makes it super important that clients find the boudoir photographer whose definition and reasoning for boudoir photography matches their desired outcome for their boudoir experience.

What is boudoir Photography

Boudoir photography for us here at The boudoir studio is at its basics: photography that enstills sensual, sexual, intimate, and emotive feelings and creates a sense of confidence and sexiness within the images and the client.
is not only a photographic style, when performed by a professional boudoir photographer, boudoir photography sessions can be a transformational experience that leads clients to growth and change in many aspects of their life.
Though boudoir photo sessions can be therapeutic, it is important to note that they are not therapy, Boudoir sessions can help you recognize strength, confidence, and power that you may have forgotten existed inside you. The sessions bring out these feelings and beliefs that have been piled deep under a lot of life happenings, and it effects us all.
It is the photographing of individuals or couples in a sensual bedroom like setting and not very clothed. It has intimate and voyeuristic tones where you feel the erotic intensity through the boudoir images of the subjects.
At The boudoir Studio what a boudoir photo looks like is an intense emotive and enticing image that elicits intimate and/or sexual feelings.

Boudoir photography here with us is not just “here I am looking cute in lingerie” but for some boudoir photographers and some people looking for boudoir photographers that is exactly the type of boudoir they are looking for, its just not our type.

Because as you will see boudoir photography is different for each and every photographer who offers boudoir.
Finding the style of boudoir, the type of boudoir and the boudoir studio that matches what the client wants is the most important to having an incredible boudoir experience.

Lingerie is not the defining characteristic of a boudoir photo the emotive intent is.

Why boudoir Photography is a thing?

Throughout everyone’s lives, they are fed these ideas of what beautiful, confident, sexy people look like, what their intimacy looks like, and what they should look like if they want to feel those ways.
But what a boudoir photography session with an inclusive educated and professional boudoir photographer does is teach you that as you are now and what your intimacy is is beautiful, does make you confident and you are sexy in those moments. The transformation from boudoir photography comes from changing the way clients see themselves by providing an experience where they not only become art that is beautifully alluring but open their eyes to themselves being those things as they are now and finding their confidence and truth in those beliefs.

Boudoir Photography can be seen as just a photography style and session where clients are in lingerie taking cute and sexy photos, but with the right photographer, boudoir is so much more, it is intense, intimate and sensual; it shows the romantic and erotic side of the client and also the vulnerable real and connecting sides. Boudoir photography should encompass who the client truly is and not a falsified version to meet the stereotypical ideologies society has forced on us to meet in order to feel those things.

Where does boudoir Photography happen?

Boudoir photography takes place in all types of locations, hotels, houses. studios, there is not a wrong place for boudoir to take place.
Theres quite a bit of discrepency on whether or not boudoir outside is actually boudoir because its not technically in a bedroom.
I call b.s.

A boudoir photographer with emotional intelligence and training on coaching and creating emotive imagery and specializes in coordinating intimacy to create art doesn’t need to be in a set space to do so.
And my reasoning for that personally is “ True intimacy happens everywhere.” it is not limited to that of the bedroom or a bedroom like area.
If you feel sensual and sexual laying out on the forest floor naked surrounded by nature who is to say that is not the boudoir in which you connect most to?
As a photographer who photographs kink and bdsm photography often with clients I feel that the intense sexual energy that happens in a BDSM dungeon is that to the sexual energy in a bedroom, one not more important than another.
Boudoir takes place in the spaces in which someone feels the most confident, intimate and sensual and every boudoir client should be able to choose where that is for them.

Our studio of over 2000 sq feet, as well as multiple outdoor options has everything to offer from kitchen boudoir, couch boudoir , vintage boudoir, bed boudoir, kink boudoir, dungeon boudoir and outdoor boudoir.

In conclusionWhat is boudoir?

The only person who can answer what boudoir is, is you.
Because you get to choose exactly what it means to you and what you want it to look like!
If you want light, bright boudoir posed in beautiful lingerie being your cheerful self that is your boudoir.

If you feel the most sensual and confident out in nature naked with the forest and the animals that is your boudoir
If you desire intensity and raw bedroom and home vibes doing natural sensual things that is your boudoir.

Boudoir is based on the individual partaking in the boudoir photography session and should be whatever they desire it to be.