We hope to bring back the Boudoir services  later in 2011.

Shortly on our Boudoir Photography website, you will soon see the new Personalised Photography Vouchers. It is a gift that you wont see often if at all!  But we have made some Christmas Vouchers for guys or girls who know someone close to you who have wanted to have a photo shoot but never had the bottle or cash to pay for a luxury photo shoot.

• Club together with family and friends, or simply purchase a voucher covering the costs of all or part of the photo shoot.
• Use the information on the Christmas Voucher page (appearing soon) to select your voucher design.
• Pick the message to use or write your own.
• Give us the details of their name, and yours along with an address to send the voucher to.
• Pay and then wait for the Personalised Photography Session Voucher to arrive.

Look for the new big banner showing soon on the boudoir photography website.

Living up to a paper doll, is a little bit easier than you think.. A like for like, book your boudoir shoot, talk to the photographers, have fun , enjoy your self and then when anyone says, those girls in the magazines look so lush/ stunning/sexy/flawless, you can just pull out your images and wow them all

Glamour photography ( as we define it) is all about lies, when you get down to to todays definition of  glamour is the impression of attraction or fascination that a particularly luxurious or elegant appearance creates, an impression which is better than the reality.

Glamour photography is a genre of photography where you are portrayed in a romantic or sexually alluring way. but glamour photography stops short of deliberately arousing the viewer in a more adult way. Boudoir photography is different in that the photography is more set to show off the lingerie and poses that may add more tease rather than the out right excitement of a glamour photo shoot.
Pinup Photography is more fun and less flirty, and sexual in the imagery but it still retains  the flirtyness in a indirect way. Also Pin-up can be more classical in the form of the calendar girls, or can be more glamorous with the modern type of pin up photo shoots. 

Lighter retouching with Boudoir, more retouching with glamour…

as you can see in the video, we have a boudoir pose and glamour retouching. It all part of the look ten years younger retouching which has to be asked for, as normally we wouldn’t go that far with clients, though it is pretty reserved in many aspects that can be altered.

The new Boudoir Photography website from National Photographer has it all. We have had two websites in our boudoir history some had certain things and other did not, but this time we have added some NEW features…

• Online Shop
• Easy access to slide shows and videos
• Front page news and update feature
• A gallery..

The shop: The shop is broken down into; services, photo shoots, albums and prints. Before there was a package page which had it all but this time we are going to break it all down so that you know what your paying for with your packages and if you are adding other things to your package its easier..

The slide shows and videos: to give you an idea of the products you can view the slide shows, these are designer albums or picture shows to show you want things look like. Videos show you what shoots are like and also give you tips and advice so you have prior knowledge before coming for your photo shoot. These are all listed under the PHOTO SHOOT tab in the menu. There is also booking information to help you with the booking process.

Note that if you click Media from the bottom of the page, all videos will be shown in a list from the site. click the top of the image will get the page, clicking the bottom will open the video in a little box.

The front page images will take you to feature posts and updates, these can be news releases or promotions that we are currently running.

 News appears directly under the images along with links to the areas of the website.

Lower left: the lower left of the pages contains the most recent posts so you can find out the latest things we have wrote about.

The categories list  shown in the bottom of the website will show all posts based on the subjects title. These are divided into the areas of photography which we offer and other areas of interest.

Search: You can now search the website for articles which we have written, using simple keywords to find what you are looking for will bring up all the relevant information based on what you have searched for. We do hope that the website is more intuitive to use.

The menu for prices and packages, will bring up the information and full details of the packages which are currently offered, Due to limitations in the shop store, we cannot provide full information only summaries of the packages.

NEW:

Themed photo shoots are now available.
Bridal boudoir is one theme, The American beauty is another theme, we are opening up the themes for stories and ‘special’ photo shoots.

Locations.. Information is now available (with pictures) on some of the venues we shoot at, there are lots to select from  so have not shown all of them. We have also listed the studios.

head over and check out the site today.. don’t forget you can now post your comments, tell us what you would like to see on the website and even suggest some changes..http://boudoir.nationalphotographer.co.uk/

I know from experience  that many couples have tried these home made boudoir photo shoots and found it to be a massive problem to get anything like the pro’s and unless your investing several thousands of pounds into camera and lighting equipment and have a good grasp of photography, the chances are you’re trying to get your shots on a compact digital. If you are trying to do this by yourself, you will always find it hard as you cannot see the photos that you are taking while trying to be in them.. so first tip is get some help.

This is an average boudoir photo and we can see a massive amount of problems with it.
Here is a List of issues that I see:
The head looks far too big.
The background is too bright.
The hands and feet are cut off.
The body is twisted.
The camera angled wrong.

The camera angle in this image is wrong and this is causing a lot of the problems within this photo.

As you can see in this diagram, the camera is tipped in on the top left hand corner, this has the effect of magnification from this point and therefore distorts the picture.

If you can see the photo that you want to take and things aren’t as they looked in your eye and what has been taken by the camera, then you need to hold the camera straight and level. 

 A tripod will help as well as looking at how you hold the camera making sure its is level on both axis.

Even while holding the camera at the correct angles, some people pushing the button to take the photo will tip the camera, this is often overlooked when they try to get the picture framed correctly or have other aspects  of the photo on their mind.

The rule of thirds is what makes a technical picture correct, it is some what also linked with how we look at a picture.
We look at the upper right cross point and work anti clockwise when looking at an image, also a point of the highest contrast or most vivid colour.
All four points and areas should contain points of interest to make the best photos for your boudoir shoot.

One of the problems with this image is that the background is blown out (its too white) across the back and the bottom there should be a defined line of contrast, this is lost due to the use of a compact camera that cannot cope with the foreground lighting and background lighting.

What we have done in the images above is corrected the distortion of the camera and then applied a rule of thirds overlay so that you can see the difference in the images.
As you can see right-way the head is right size and we have also cropped the image to fill the frame. Lose and cut off arms do not attract interest and are senseless to have in the image from what was left in the original.
we think that the last third on the right side of the image, is also distorted and as you can see we have changed this in the image below.

When shooting your photo shoot, you will need to consider lighting, with compact cameras you do not want to use the flash as you could end up with an awful image.
When  you think about lighting, you should consider where the light places will be and where the shadows will be, this is a big factor as it can be flattering or give a terrible image, no matter how good the angles and person in the photos are.

In this image, you can see that we have used one light, What we have done is brought it down so that it is above the model and at 45 degrees pointing down the body and across. The light is about 12 degrees above facing the model.

As you possibly don’t have accesses to professional studio lighting, you need to use either controlled lighting or take control of your camera. This is where people become very stuck with compact cameras, not to mention the control and balance of all the aspects of the lighting.
If you have a fixed lighting source, then you need to be able to manually shoot the image..

Here are some setting to try if you can go fully manual.
Shutter 150 F stop 5 ISO 200.
Adjusting the shutter to 65 is possible if you need more light to expose the image correctly, you may also wish to raise the ISO to 400.

If the images exposes correctly or too bright, then change the F stop (aperture) to a higher number therefore cutting out more of the light.

If you have adjustable lights, you may wish to use higher lighting that you think, the lighting you see is not the lighting that makes the photos.
Your camera will try to meter (set it self) for the lighting all over the image to give you a balanced image, If you look at the metering settings or what could be called sample settings, you would need to set this to a small point. If it has a timer setting for this metering, then set if for a longer duration.

Hold the camera to a higher lite part of the image that you will want, if you have  and EL button press this so that it is locked, (EL means exposure lock) Then frame the image and take the photo.
Remember; compact cameras require higher (more intense /brighter) lighting to achieve the same results as professional cameras, they also preform worse with higher ISO setting ( ISO setting is sensitivity to light) You will also not be able to obtain large prints or have the dynamic range of of professional SLR camera.

Taking photos like the ones we take, is all about lighting and being able to set you camera manually. Use one or two lights to light the model and you will see the difference in the images. Your eyes are great, and they balance light so that you can see, so you need to look at the lighting you use to gauge how they will look when the camera has taken them.

Posing the model also has  a lot to do with the end result, by working the model and changing things around, slight tip’s, dips and turns make a BIG difference. Take a look at the videos on the Boudoir Photography website for some ideas.

We have geared up ready for the winter with this post we made a few days ago. We are looking at running a winter promotion right about now, I do know that its weeks away, but booking your photo shoot, picking your theme and then getting everything ready take a little time to arrange.

 Of course after the photo shoot, there is the choice of do you give him an album or do you give him a calendar? Once you have selected your images for printing and things are designed and personalised just for you, it will be time for Christmas. Plus it’s one thing to strike off the list and best carried out well in advance so he doesn’t suspect a thing.

Keep your eye on our posts and the promotions to see what wonderful offer we will have for you this year.
[ book your boudoir / pin up shoot in advance as last year many left it too late and missed out]

When you select your boudoir photographer for your stunning photo shoot, the photographer doesn’t turn up, take the picture and then print them out. All of us photographer wish it was the case, but the truth is that it doesn’t happen like this.

So here is a walk through of the shoots and the work that really happens:

Your Boudoir photographer is in business and as professional photographers, they have a massive cost on cameras, insurance and all the other business costs such as insurance, office/Office rental, telephone and Internet, the staff, and of course their website and marketing so that you can find them and they have somewhere to shoot your photography session.

Once you contact your photographer about your own personal photo shoot, they will talk to you about what you want and the styles. This make the shoot personalised to you and your requirements.

You attend your boudoir photo shoot and this is on average about 4 hours long.

Once your photo shoot is over, the photographer has to edit all the images so that they look great and are balanced, they may design the books and other items that you may want.This take around 30 hours making the photo shoot for each person a total of around 40 hours.

If we now put the shoe on your foot, we just simple ask you how much for this working week would you liked to be paid?

We then have to add the costs of prints, albums and the business costs to this weekly wage that you have given yourself, and you can soon see that costs add up. 

If you look at the boudoir package prices published on the National Photographer Boudoir Photography website, you can see that the photo shoot offered are amazing value for money.

Related Articles

• Boudoir Wedding Photography Tips (brighthub.com)
• Boudoir Photography…Are You Tempted? (thelingerieaddict.com)

“The difference with a print is that unmounted they just do not look as good as designer albums or wall mount prints. I see this all the time with the photography that I do and its the finishing touches that can make a massive difference” said Rory Witham CEO of National Photographer.

Grafixphoto is the national photographer commercial photography and design part of national photographer, they are sent images which the clients select or we forward images to the design team so that they can order the books and albums if they want.  It takes time to design but most clients are more than happy to buy the albums and whats more, we never hard sell anything, we simply do not have to as they sell themselves and  due to the pricing structure of National Photographer they are superb value.

With there being around 17 weeks of photography time between now and Xmas shut down and working on the basis that each photo shoot take around two weeks to process after the shoot, there isn’t much time.

Also we know that planning the shoots as we don’t do a walk-in mass production of the same thing for every client, takes time as well, often this is around two to three weeks; Making your boudoir photo shoot a total of five weeks duration, perhaps you can see why it’s not cheap to have your photo shoot with all the hours of work which is put into our photography sessions.

Boudoir Photo shoot will be cut off in the first week of December.

Related Articles

• Boudoir Photography…Are You Tempted? (thelingerieaddict.com)