outdoor boudoir photography, black lace + behaving ourselves in the woods
there is something about black lace in the middle of the woods
that just makes sense to me: a little gothic. a little halloween. a little girl-next-door-(who may or may not live in the forest???)
nothing particularly scandalous happened here, unless you count some aggressive arching against trees. 😜
this baddie and I made these outdoor boudoir photographs on private property near Alvin, Texas, tucked away from the busier parts of South Houston where we could actually slow down, wander around, follow the light and make something that felt a little moodier than your standard pretty-sunset-in-a-field situation.
i focused on simple details like black lace. denim. gold jewelry. long hair disappearing into the trees. very innocent woodland fairy vibes who is possibly plotting something.
first things first: no, I am not taking your nudes at the local park lol
when I photograph outdoor boudoir photography sessions, especially anything involving lingerie, implied nudity or actual nudity, location matters, a lot! I primarily photograph outdoor boudoir on private property where we have permission to be, or at private rental locations that allow the kind of session we are creating.
there are beautiful public parks all over the Houston area, but that does not automatically make them appropriate places for boudoir or nudity. privacy is part of my experience.
you are already doing something vulnerable by allowing yourself to be photographed this intimately. I want you paying attention to how the breeze feels on your skin, whether you like the pose we are trying, how the light is moving through the trees (not whether a family of five is about to round the corner).
first things first: no, I am not taking your nudes at the local park lol
when I photograph outdoor boudoir photography sessions, especially anything involving lingerie, implied nudity or actual nudity, location matters, a lot! I primarily photograph outdoor boudoir on private property where we have permission to be, or at private rental locations that allow the kind of session we are creating.
there are beautiful public parks all over the Houston area, but that does not automatically make them appropriate places for boudoir or nudity. privacy is part of my experience.
you are already doing something vulnerable by allowing yourself to be photographed this intimately. I want you paying attention to how the breeze feels on your skin, whether you like the pose we are trying, how the light is moving through the trees (not whether a family of five is about to round the corner).
nature gets to be part of the photograph
I also care pretty deeply about how we behave when we photograph outside. nature is not a disposable backdrop. if we walk into an outdoor space to make something beautiful, I want it to look basically the same when we leave. my general outdoor-session philosophy is very simple:
♡ stay on established trails and traveling areas
♡ pack in what we need and pack it back out with us
♡ trash comes home with us
♡ plants, branches, flowers, rocks and etc. get left alone
♡ if something has to be damaged, disturbed or rearranged to make the photograph work? we don’t. we find another photograph
it is basically Leave No Trace. and truthfully, some of my favorite photographs happen because we work with the environment instead of trying to dominate it: tangled branches stay tangled, the weird fallen tree becomes somewhere to sit. shadows get dark, the wind moves the hair wherever it wants that’s when the photograph starts feeling like that actual evening instead of a set we temporarily constructed inside it. (presence is kind of the whole point.)
also: this gallery is not YOUR dress code
this baddie’s version of this shoot lived somewhere between spooky little forest creature and hottie who happened to wander into the woods wearing black lace -which, frankly, is a wonderful story. but what you see in someone else's boudoir gallery is never a requirement for yours.
you do not have to wear lingerie. you do not have to take anything off. you also don't have to stop at black lace and denim shorts if you want something much more daring. every person's relationship with being seen is different, especially when the camera starts moving closer.
some people want soft portraits and little details. some want implied nudity. some want artful nude photographs. some want something stranger, darker, messier, more cinematic, more playful, more romantic.
my job is not to decide where your boundary line should be. my job is actually to create enough guidance and safety that you can decide where it is while we are making something together.
…which brings me to my NEXT responsible career goal: getting arrested abroad
okay obviously I am joking. 😭 because while I am extremely committed to the whole permission / private property / respecting nature / not getting either of us cited for public indecency thing... I have also been a photographer long enough to have a mental list of ridiculous places around the world where I would LOVE to make nude or nearly-nude photographs someday.
give me giant rocks. give me strange coastlines. give me mountains. give me empty desert. give me some completely secluded little corner of the earth where a human body suddenly looks very small against everything surrounding it.
(…responsibly and legally, your honor.)
there is still something I really love about bringing boudoir outside because it removes some of the visual language we normally associate with it: no freakin’ bed required!! no perfectly styled bedroom. no studio wall telling us exactly what genre of photograph we are supposed to be making. just a person, a body, some light, and the nature around them. your body does not suddenly become worthy of being photographed when it is posed perfectly under controlled studio lighting. it can already part of the landscape of your life.
so yes, please bring me your weird outdoor boudoir ideas
especially if your vision falls somewhere around:
♡ gothic woodland baddie
♡ barefoot creek siren
♡ black lace at golden hour
♡ misty morning in the trees
♡ strange nature editorial
♡ desert wasteland nudity
♡ early morning beach boudoir
♡ “Nikki I have private property and an idea”
because that last sentence has historically been very effective on me. lol. whether we are somewhere around Alvin, somewhere else in South Houston, or halfway across the USA for a destination boudoir session, the same thing matters to me:
we make something that feels like you, we take care of the place while we're there, and you get to decide exactly how much of yourself you want to reveal.
the photographs can be playful. they can be strange. they can be sexy. they can be almost innocent. or they can be absolutely none of those things. because there is room for all of it! (and there is always room for one more woman aggressively arching against a tree… respectfully. 🌲 )
