As you probably know from my relentless posts, Boudoir Bash is coming up fast! This weekend, in fact! I'm so excited to take some beautiful portraits, but I'm also really excited to meet the badass babes who have signed up! They're all different ages, different women with different lives and experiences, but they all share one thing in common:
They didn't wait.
They didn't wait for outside permission to celebrate themselves. They didn't wait for their bodies to change to fit some distant ideal. They didn't wait to be told there was an acceptable reason to step in front of the camera.
Have you ever thought about that? How there are certain times when it's considered "acceptable" to hire a photographer? When you are graduating high school. When you are getting married. When you are expecting a baby. It's not really considered "normal" to hire a photographer just because you simply are.
That's so weird to me! Every day is a beautiful, crazy gift that we really didn't do anything to deserve. The very fact that we're alive and existing is nothing short of a miracle, but we all collectively decide that only a few days are worth remembering, and only if they involve a huge life change? No way. Screw that! Life is beautiful, your life is beautiful, you are beautiful right freaking now, as is. Why wait?
My hope as a photographer, and my mission as a business, is to empower women to grab hold of their lives and take a moment to appreciate just how strong and amazing they really are, even if only for a day. I want them to walk out of a session with me knowing that they can conquer the world, and for their photographs to remind them of that fact every single day. That badass beauty smashing a cake for her 35th birthday in a tulle ballgown on the beach? She's just as powerful and amazing when she's doing the eighth load of laundry for the day. The sultry, self-possessed vixen posing for her boudoir photos is just as much of a force to be reckoned with when she's attending to patients after being on her feet for twelve hours a day. And the new mother frozen in a photograph, holding up her freshly born baby with a mixture of love and awe and pride in her eyes helps get herself through the nights when her bundle of joy just won't sleep.
Too often, I think, we surround ourselves with things external to us. How many pictures do you have framed and hanging on your walls? The answer is: not enough. What do you think would change about how you felt about yourself, or your pet shedding on your furniture, or your children throwing a tantrum, or your partner being late for a date night yet again if you were literally surrounded by images of the beautiful moments they bring to your life?
I guess this was all a long-winded way of saying to all the women who have signed up for Boudoir Bash: thank you. Thank you for taking a chance, for trying something new, and for helping me to start a new way to experience photography in northern Michigan. This is just the beginning, because I am more determined than ever to create art that enriches lives, and changes your way of thinking about your life.
Life is what we make of it, and I hope you'll join me in making it one big celebration of itself. No real reason. Just because.