Sunday Media / Portraits
Boudoir photography for the person in the mirror
This page is the whole thing written down. What happens in the room, who is allowed in it, where the files go, what you wear, how the posing works, and every single way you can say no. Read it before you decide anything.
Based in Guelph, ON. Shooting across Southern Ontario. Every fee, including travel, insurance and any studio or suite costs, is discussed and agreed in writing before anything becomes binding.
Placeholder image. Swap this for your own boudoir work, with written permission, before the page goes live.
Private, controlled, and entirely on your terms.
Almost nobody books this the first time they think about it. People sit on the idea for months, sometimes years, and the thing holding them back is almost never the photographs. It is the unknowns. Who will see these. What will I be asked to do. What happens if I hate it halfway through. Where do the files actually live afterwards.
Those are good questions and they deserve real answers instead of a gallery and a booking button. So this page answers them in order, before it shows you anything else.
The short version. It is a closed set. You are directed through every frame so you are never standing there wondering what to do with your hands. You see the back of the camera early and often. You can stop at any point, for any reason, or for no reason at all. Nothing you shoot is posted, printed, entered, submitted or shown to anyone without a separate written yes from you, and saying no to that changes nothing about your session or your gallery.
If you read this whole page and decide it is not for you, that is a good outcome too. Better now than in a room.
Thirty minutes to two and a half hours
Sessions run from 30 to 150 minutes depending on the package you choose. Thirty minutes is one look and one lighting setup, done properly. One hundred and fifty minutes is four or five looks, several setups, hair and makeup time built in, and room to sit down with a coffee in the middle of it.
You are directed, frame by frame
Nobody is ever told to look sexy. Every pose is built in three or four tiny corrections given out loud: chin forward, weight onto the back hip, breathe out, hold. If you can follow instructions you can do this, and that is the entire skill required.
Yours before they are anyone else’s
These are made for you first. If they end up as a gift, an album, or a single print in a drawer, that is your call and it is made after you have seen them, not before. Nothing leaves your gallery without your written permission.
Who actually books this
Almost never for the reason people assume. Here is what the enquiries actually say.
For themselves
The most common reason by a wide margin. No occasion, no recipient, no plan for the images beyond having them. This is the default, not the exception.
Before a wedding
Booked six to ten weeks out, delivered as an album handed over on the morning of. Bridal boudoir has its own timing, its own wardrobe and its own deadline, and it is covered further down this page.
After something hard
After treatment, after a diagnosis, after a divorce, after a body that changed without asking permission. These sessions run slower and quieter on purpose. Tell us when you book and we will build the whole thing around it.
After a baby
Post partum sessions are common and they are not maternity sessions. Different wardrobe, different pacing, and a room warm enough to be comfortable in for two hours.
A milestone birthday
Thirty, forty, fifty, sixty. The number itself is the reason, and the photographs end up being the least interesting part of why people are glad they did it.
Couples together
Two people, same session, same rules. Everything on this page applies to both of you, and consent is collected from both of you separately.
This is the section that should decide it for you
Every other page on this website can put privacy in the small print. This one cannot, so it goes first and it goes in plain language. If any part of what follows is not what you want, tell us and we will put your version in writing before you pay anything.
None of this is a favour and none of it is negotiable in our direction. It is how the session runs by default.
Nothing is shared. Ever. Unless you sign for it.
The model release is a separate document from the booking contract, it is optional, and it starts blank. If you never sign it, your photographs are used for exactly one thing: being delivered to you. Declining changes nothing about the session, the number of frames, the editing, or the delivery date.
Permission comes in levels
- Nothing at all. The default, and the most common choice.
- Faceless or cropped frames only, chosen image by image by you.
- Specific images, listed by filename, for a specific named use.
- Full permission, which almost nobody gives and which we do not ask for.
Permission is revocable in writing
Change your mind in a month or in four years. Send one message. Anything of yours that is live comes down and we confirm in writing when it is done. There is no cooling off period, no fee and no conversation about why.
Closed set means closed
The photographer, and anyone you bring. No assistants, no second shooter, no studio owner wandering through, unless you agreed to it in advance and in writing. Doors are locked from the inside. A female photographer is available on request, so ask when you enquire.
Where they live from the second they exist
Two cards in the camera, written to simultaneously, both of which stay with the photographer. Nothing goes onto a phone. Editing happens on an encrypted drive, offline, and by the same person who shot it. Your finished gallery sits on our own website, not on a third party host we cannot see inside.
You can have everything deleted
Once you have downloaded your gallery, ask in writing and every original, every edit and every backup copy is destroyed. We confirm in writing when it is done. After that we genuinely cannot recover them for you either, so download first and ask second.
Without a specific signed yes for that specific use: post to social, put it on this website, print it as a wall sample or a studio book, enter it in a competition, submit it to a blog or a magazine, show it at a bridal show, hand it to a second photographer, or use it in an advertisement. A general release signed once does not cover all of those, because we do not use general releases. If you want a non disclosure agreement on top of all of it, say so when you enquire and we will sign one before the session rather than after.
Your access code is a house key, not a hashtag.
Your gallery is opened by a private code that arrives with the delivery message. Anyone holding that code can see everything in it, so treat it accordingly. If you think it has gone somewhere it should not have, message us and we reset it the same day. If you want a second, limited gallery to show one specific person, we can build that instead of you forwarding the code.
Where do people actually do this?
Boudoir is a studio first session for most people, and there is a reason for that: a private studio is the only room on this list where the temperature, the light, the lock on the door and the person walking past the window are all under someone’s control. But it is not the only option, and for some sessions it is not even the best one.
Six other rooms come up regularly, and each one changes the photographs in a way worth knowing about before you pick. Tap through them.
Whichever you choose, the same rule applies: we walk the space beforehand or we get photographs of it, we know where the light comes from and at what hour, and we know who else has a key.
The private studio
Guelph, and studio rentals in Kitchener, Waterloo and CambridgeThe default, and for a first session it is almost always the right answer. Everything that makes people nervous about boudoir is a variable somewhere else and a fixed setting here. The door locks from the inside. The heat goes to twenty four degrees before you arrive. There is a private changing area with a mirror, a rail and a chair, so you are never getting changed in the room you are photographed in.
Light is the other half of it. A studio does not care what the sky is doing, which means a February session at four in the afternoon looks exactly like a June session at ten in the morning. Window light, low key, high key, hard shadow, silhouette: all six looks in the light section further down are available in one room on one afternoon.
The trade off is that a studio looks like a studio. If you want your own bed and your own window in the frame, that is a different location, and it is two slices along.
A first session, winter dates, and anyone who wants the variables gone.
Whatever we build. Any hour, any month, identical result.
Highest on this list. Locked door, no windows onto the street, no foot traffic.
Rental studios with shared kitchens and other bookings. We book whole space only.
A hotel suite
Downtown Guelph, Cambridge, Stratford, Niagara wine countryThe classic for a reason. A good suite gives you a wall of glass, white linen that bounces light back up into your face for free, a robe, a bath, a chair by the window and a coffee afterwards. It also gives you a night away from your own house, which for a lot of people is half the appeal.
The room matters more than the hotel. We want a corner suite or a high floor with light on two sides, a bed not jammed against a wall, and curtains that are sheer rather than blackout only. Send us the room number when you book and we will look at the floor plan and the window direction before you commit.
Check in time is the constraint. Most rooms open at three or four in the afternoon, which in December is already the end of the usable daylight, so winter suite sessions are lit rather than natural. In June you can shoot until half past eight.
Making a night of it, couples, and anyone who wants light and space.
Whatever the window gives, plus one small light for the corners.
Good. Do not disturb on the door, and housekeeping cleared with the desk in advance.
Late check in, low ceilings, orange lamps, and mirrored closets that catch the photographer.
Your own bedroom
Wherever you live, within our travel radiusThe quietly personal one. Nothing to book, nothing to drive to, no arriving somewhere unfamiliar in a coat with a bag of lingerie. You are getting ready in your own bathroom with your own mirror and your own playlist, and the photographs carry that.
It asks for one thing in return, and it is not tidying. It is a window. We need one decent source of daylight and roughly two metres of clear floor in front of it. We move a lamp, we pull a nightstand out, we strip the duvet down to a plain sheet, and we put everything back before we leave. Nothing else needs to change.
The honest caveat: your bedroom light lasts about three hours a day and it points where it points. We will ask which way the window faces and pick your time from that, which usually means a mid morning or late morning session rather than an evening one.
Nerves, post partum sessions, and anyone who relaxes faster at home.
Mid morning at the biggest window, curtains sheer, overheads off.
Yours to arrange. Nobody else home, and phones on silent in another room.
Small rooms, ceiling bulbs fighting the window, and neighbours across the way.
A daylight loft
Converted mill and warehouse spaces around Guelph, Kitchener, Cambridge, EloraOld brick, timber beams, concrete floor and a wall of tall north facing glass. Southern Ontario has an unreasonable number of these because it has an unreasonable number of nineteenth century mills, and a lot of them now rent by the half day.
North light through a big window is the softest, most consistent natural light there is, and it holds steady for hours instead of shifting every twenty minutes. Set a chair four feet from that glass and you have a portrait that looks like it cost a great deal more than it did.
This is the editorial end of boudoir: more architectural, more clothing, more shadow, less bedroom. If the word boudoir puts you off but the photographs appeal to you, this is usually the slice people land on.
An editorial look, tall spaces, and sessions with several wardrobe changes.
North glass, all day, soft and steady. The most forgiving light on this page.
Book the whole floor, confirm in writing that no other shoot overlaps.
Cold concrete in winter, no changing room, and street level windows.
Tile and water
A studio bathroom, a suite bath, or your own if it has a windowA tub is a boudoir staple because it does three useful things at once. It covers whatever you want covered, it gives your hands and arms somewhere obvious to be, and white tile bounces light around the room until there is barely a shadow left anywhere.
Two practical notes people never expect. Run the water warm and shallow rather than hot and deep, because a hot bath fogs the lens, reddens skin and wilts hair inside five minutes. And bring a second towel, because you will want to be dry and warm again quickly before the next look.
Milk baths, flowers and foam are all fine and all fun, and all of them need to be agreed in advance so we bring the right kit and the studio has the right floor covering. They are not a last minute decision.
Coverage without clothing, and anyone who wants softness over structure.
A window if there is one, otherwise one light bounced off the ceiling.
Same as the room it sits in. Frosted glass is your friend.
Lens fog, wet hair for the rest of the session, and cold tile underfoot.
The morning of suite
Bridal boudoir, in the getting ready room or six weeks earlierBridal boudoir splits into two entirely different bookings and people mix them up constantly.
The first is a separate session, shot six to ten weeks before the wedding, edited and printed into a small album that gets handed over on the morning. That timing is not arbitrary: it leaves room for delivery, album production and shipping, and it is the version to book if the album is the point.
The second is thirty minutes carved out of the getting ready coverage on the day itself, in the robe, before the dress, while hair and makeup are fresh and the room is still calm. It costs you almost nothing in schedule and it produces some of the best frames of the entire morning. If you want it, tell your wedding photographer at the timeline meeting rather than on the day.
An album handed over on the morning, or thirty quiet minutes before the dress.
Six to ten weeks out if there is an album. Albums are printed, not emailed.
Clear the room first. A getting ready suite is the least private room at a wedding.
Running late. This is the first thing to get squeezed, so put it in the timeline.
Somewhere private outdoors
A rented cabin, private land with written permission, a cottage deck at sunriseIt comes up every summer and it can be beautiful, so here is the honest version rather than the romantic one.
Outdoors means private property only, with the owner’s written permission, and it means covered or implied rather than uncovered. A conservation area, a public trail, a beach and a rented park pavilion are all public places and all off the table regardless of how empty they look at six in the morning. That is not us being cautious, that is the law and it is also basic respect for whoever walks around the corner.
The practical window is roughly late May to mid September, at sunrise or in the last hour before sunset, on a still day. A rented cabin with its own acreage, a private cottage deck facing east, or a friend’s back field with a note from the friend are the three arrangements that actually work.
Summer sessions, sunrise, and anyone who wants space in the frame.
First hour after sunrise, last hour before sunset. Nothing in between.
Private land with written permission only. Never a public space.
Cold, insects, nowhere to change, and no plan B if the weather turns.
How to choose between them
Comfort beats scenery
The room you relax fastest in produces better photographs than the room that looks best empty. If a hotel makes you self conscious and your own bedroom does not, book your bedroom. Nobody looking at the images can tell how expensive the wallpaper was.
Count your looks first
One or two looks fits comfortably anywhere. Four or five needs a changing area, a rail and somewhere to put a bag, which quietly rules out most bathrooms and a lot of lofts.
Check the month before the room
Every natural light location on this list is a different proposition in January than in June. In winter the studio is not the safe choice, it is the only choice that gives you an afternoon slot.
Ask who else has a key
Hotel housekeeping, a studio owner, a loft manager, a partner coming home early. Ask the question out loud for whichever room you pick, and get the answer before the day rather than during it.
Find the warmest room
Cold is the single most common reason a session goes flat, and it shows in shoulders, hands and jaw within about ten minutes. Twenty four degrees is the target, and it is worth arguing with a thermostat over.
Do not overthink it
If none of this resolves into an obvious answer, book the studio. It is the default for a reason, it removes every variable at once, and you can shoot somewhere more adventurous next time knowing exactly what you like.
Tell us the feeling and we will tell you the room. Soft and warm and close, or graphic and shadowed, or bright and clean and almost clinical. Those three answers point at three different locations and three different lighting plans, and it is a much easier question than picking a venue off a list. We are also building a full Photoshoot Locations guide for Southern Ontario, with the studio and rental spaces we work in regularly and what each room is actually good for.
What actually happens, in order
The fear is almost never of the photographs. It is of the twenty minutes before them, and of not knowing what is expected. So here is the entire run of a session, start to finish, with nothing left vague.
Timings below are for a session in the middle of the range. A thirty minute session compresses steps three to six and skips the second look. A one hundred and fifty minute session stretches all of them and adds a proper break in the middle.
Before you arrive
The address goes to you and nobody else, with parking notes and which door to use. If you are bringing someone, we need their name in advance, because otherwise they are not getting in either. The room is heated and the light is set up before you knock.
The first fifteen minutes, with no camera
Coffee or tea, the door locked, your looks out of the bag and hung on the rail in the order we will shoot them. We go through the plan out loud, agree what is in and what is out, and you say the things you would rather not have photographed. Nobody picks up a camera during this part.
Getting changed
In a separate changing area, every time, with a mirror and a door or a screen. You are never asked to change in the room you are photographed in, and you come back out in a robe if you want to. The robe stays on until you decide otherwise.
The most covered look goes first
Always. A shirt, a knit, a robe, a sheet. It warms everyone up, it gets the first ten frames out of the way while you are still finding your feet, and by the time we reach anything else you have already seen yourself on the back of the camera and stopped bracing.
How the direction sounds
Small, specific, constant. Chin toward me then down two inches. Weight onto the back hip. Longest breath out you have got. Hand into the hair, not onto the hair. Point the back toe. There is no silence to fill and there is nothing to invent, and you will be told the second something works.
You see the back of the camera
Early, within the first few frames, and then whenever you want. This is the part that changes the session, because almost everybody relaxes the moment they see one frame they like. If you hate one, say so and it is deleted in front of you.
The break
Halfway through, robe on, sit down, water, look at what we have on a laptop. This is when the second half gets planned properly, because by now we both know what is working and what is not worth another ten minutes.
The end, and where the cards go
We finish on something easy, you get changed, and the two memory cards stay in the camera bag with the photographer. Nothing is copied to a phone. You get a message the same evening confirming the files are backed up and offline, and your sneak peeks follow within 48 hours on whichever channel you asked for.
Sentences that end a discussion instantly
- Can we stop for a minute.
- I want that one deleted, now, while I am watching.
- I am cold.
- Not that look after all.
- Can you show me what that looks like before I do it.
- I want to finish early.
- I have changed my mind about the whole thing.
If you want a person in the building
You are welcome to bring one person and it is common. Give us their name in advance so they can be let in, and decide together beforehand whether they are in the room, in the lounge, or in a coffee shop around the corner with a phone on.
One honest note. Whoever you bring changes the session, sometimes for the better and sometimes not. A friend who makes you laugh is an asset. A friend who is nervous on your behalf is not. Pick the calm one.
Bring the list of things you do not want in the frame, and the list of things you specifically do want kept. A scar, a caesarean line, stretch marks, a tattoo, a birthmark, an arm, a chin, a whole side. Both lists matter equally and both are yours to write. Plenty of people ask for a mark to be lit deliberately rather than hidden, and that is a completely normal request. Say it at the start, in the fifteen minutes with no camera, not afterwards when it is an editing problem instead of a lighting one.
Indoors is not the same as timeless
A boudoir session mostly happens in a room, so people assume the month does not matter. It does, and in four ways: how many hours of usable window light exist that day, what your skin is doing, what wardrobe reads right, and how far ahead the good dates are already gone.
Here is the year, honestly, including the two months we would quietly steer you toward.
Spring
April to early JuneWindow light comes back properly and the usable stretch stretches from about three hours to about six. Afternoon slots reopen, which matters if you cannot take a morning off work.
Skin is at its palest and its driest after a Southern Ontario winter, and pale is a look rather than a problem: it photographs beautifully in high key and in soft window light. Give it a fortnight of moisturiser rather than a spray tan two days before, because fake tan and a camera have never once been friends.
This is also when wedding season boudoir bookings land, so if your date is in July or August you are booking the session now.
Slips, silk, a light knit, an open shirt. Cream, oat, soft green, black.
Dry from winter. Two weeks of moisturiser beats anything done in the last 48 hours.
Six usable hours by late May. Afternoons work again.
Now, if there is a summer wedding attached to it.
Summer
Mid June to early SeptemberThe longest light of the year and the only season with a real outdoor option. Sunrise sessions are genuinely lovely and almost nobody books them: quarter to six, cool air, empty everything, and you are home by half past seven.
Two summer specifics. Tan lines are real, they are permanent for the session, and they read strongly in a photograph. That is not a problem, it just needs a decision: either we shoot around them with wardrobe, or we lean into them, or you leave the straps off for a fortnight beforehand. Say which when you book.
And heat shows. A room at twenty eight degrees produces shine, flat hair and a session everybody wants to end early, so air conditioning matters more in July than heating does in January.
Cotton, linen, a swimsuit that is really a bodysuit, bare shoulders.
Tan lines are a decision, not an accident. Decide two weeks out.
Sunrise around quarter to six. Window light usable most of the day.
Heat and shine. Confirm the room has air conditioning before you book it.
Fall
Mid September to late NovemberThe best indoor light of the year, and the reason is geometry. The sun sits low enough to come in through a window sideways instead of down onto a sill, and it does that from mid morning until it sets. You get a warm, raking, cinematic light for most of a working day.
It is also the season the wardrobe finally cooperates. Oversized knitwear over almost nothing is the most requested look on this entire page and it only reads properly when it is actually sweater weather. Same for a wool blazer, a long cardigan and thick socks.
The catch is the calendar. Anything intended as a December gift has to be shot by the middle of November at the very latest to leave room for editing, album production and shipping, and October dates start disappearing in August.
Oversized knit, a wool blazer, thick socks, denim, black lace under all of it.
Low warm sun through a window for most of the day. The best of the year.
A daylight loft or a suite with west facing glass. Fall is the season to use a window.
Mid November for anything printed and given in December. Earlier for October dates.
Winter
December to MarchQuietly the best season to book, for the least romantic reason: the calendar is empty. January and February are the two quietest months of our year, which means the dates you want exist, the studio is not double booked, and there is no pressure to be out by four because someone else is coming in.
Daylight is the limitation. There are about four usable hours and by late afternoon there are none, so winter sessions are lit rather than natural, which is exactly what a studio is for. A lit session in January can be made to look identical to a window session in June, and nobody can tell from the photograph.
The one thing to actually plan for is skin. Indoor heating dries everybody out by February. Start moisturising a fortnight ahead, keep the shower shorter and cooler the morning of, and skip exfoliating within two days of the session because irritated skin photographs redder than it looks in a mirror.
Knitwear, a robe, black, deep green, and something with sleeves for the first look.
Two weeks of moisturiser. No exfoliating inside 48 hours.
Heated to twenty four before you arrive, and it stays there.
Anytime. January and February have the most room of the whole year.
Nobody is going to tell you to look sexy
That instruction is useless and it is the reason most people think they cannot do this. It asks you to perform a feeling instead of move a body part, and the only possible response is to freeze and hope.
So every direction on a Sunday Media boudoir session is mechanical, small and out loud. Move the chin. Change the weight. Breathe out. Point the toe. Nothing you are asked to do requires you to feel a particular way about yourself while you do it, which is the entire trick, and it is why the results look like you rather than like an impression of somebody else.
Scroll on, and the three rows below will move with you.
Placeholder frames, keyword matched to the setting rather than the subject on purpose. Replace with your own released work before launch.
The ones we actually use
- Longest breath out you have got, and stay there.
- Look at the window. Now back to me on three.
- Pull the shirt off one shoulder and let it stop wherever it stops.
- Push both hands up through your hair and let them fall on their own.
- Walk two steps toward me and stop when I say stop.
- Think about the single most annoying thing anyone said to you this week.
- Laugh at how ridiculous this is. That frame ends up in the gallery every single time.
Eight small things doing all the work
- Whatever is closest to the lens looks biggest. So whatever you want smallest goes furthest away, and that is a camera position, not a diet.
- Arch the lower back and push the near hip toward the camera. It lengthens the waist more than any edit ever could.
- Leave daylight between your arm and your ribs. A pressed limb spreads and flattens.
- Point the back toe. It runs a clean line all the way up the leg.
- Chin forward, then down. Feels ridiculous, fixes the jaw and the neck at once.
- Fingers relaxed and slightly apart. Never a fist, never a flat plank.
- Shoulders down and back, then breathe out. Held breath reads as tension every time.
- Sitting down, sit on the front edge. Never settle back into the chair.
Every prompt here has a version that works for your knees, your back, a shoulder that does not go that way any more, and the parts of yourself you would rather not think about while being photographed. It also has a version that works if you have never once felt comfortable in a photograph. Tell your photographer at the start, in the part with no camera. And know that the first ten minutes feel awkward for absolutely everybody, including people who have done this four times. That is not a sign it is going badly. It is just the first ten minutes.
Bring more than you think, wear less of it
Overpack. Genuinely. It costs you one extra bag and it is the difference between a session with options and a session where the one thing you brought turns out to sit wrong under that particular light. Nobody has ever regretted bringing too much, and plenty of people have regretted bringing one perfect outfit.
Two rules cover most of the decisions. Fit beats price, every single time: a well fitting piece from anywhere photographs better than an expensive piece that digs in, and a camera finds a strap cutting in from four metres away. And buy a size up if you are between sizes, because nothing in these photographs is measured and nothing that leaves a mark is worth it.
Colour is simpler than people expect. Black, white, cream, oat, deep green, burgundy and charcoal all sit beautifully in the kind of light we use. Skin tone shades disappear into skin on camera, which is occasionally the point and usually not.
Lingerie and structured pieces
- A bodysuit. The most flattering single item most people own, and the easiest to wear if you are nervous.
- High waisted sets. They photograph beautifully and they cover the part most people ask us to cover.
- A slip or a chemise in silk or satin. Movement, drape and coverage all at once.
- One black set and one light set. They light completely differently and give you two looks from one bag.
- Lace over sheer over solid, in that order of how well it photographs.
- Something with a back. Half of a boudoir gallery is shot from behind.
- Try everything on at home, a week before, and walk around the house in it for ten minutes.
- Wash anything new before the session. New elastic and unwashed lace both mark skin.
Soft layers and everyday pieces
- An oversized white or blue shirt. The single most requested look on this page and it costs nothing.
- A chunky knit or a big cardigan, pulled off one shoulder.
- A robe, silk or waffle. It is a look and it is also what you wear between every setup.
- Your partner’s blazer, or any blazer two sizes too big.
- Honest denim, worn open with something underneath.
- Thick socks. Photograph better than bare feet more often than anyone expects.
- A plain white sheet, if you are shooting at home. Strip the duvet and use it.
- Jewellery with a story, and heels you can stand in even if you never walk in them.
What to skip
- Anything that leaves a mark. Tight socks, elastic waistbands, a bra with a firm band, a hair tie on your wrist. Marks last two hours and every one of them has to be edited out.
- Fake tan and self tanner. It goes orange under studio light, it streaks in the creases and it transfers onto white sheets.
- Anything brand new and unwashed.
- Visible logos and slogans. They date the photograph to the exact year.
- Tight repeating patterns and thin stripes. They shimmer on camera.
- Anything you keep adjusting. If you tug at it in the mirror you will tug at it for two hours.
- A shower immediately before. Hot water reddens skin for about forty minutes.
Match the wardrobe to the clock
Roughly fifteen minutes goes on each change once you count getting into it, the mirror check and getting the light reset. That is what decides the number, not enthusiasm.
- 30 minutes: one look, one setup, shot properly.
- 60 minutes: two looks, or one look and two lighting setups.
- 90 minutes: three looks with a break in the middle.
- 150 minutes: four or five looks, several setups, hair and makeup time built in.
Bring one more than the number above. Options are free until they are used.
Take whichever list is useful and ignore the other one completely. Some of the best boudoir sessions we have shot were one white shirt and nothing else, or a wedding veil and a pair of jeans, or an old band t shirt somebody had owned since they were nineteen. The piece you already feel like yourself in will beat the one you bought for this, every time, and that reads in a photograph in a way nothing else does.
Six looks, and they are all built from one decision
On an outdoor session the sky decides the look and we work around it. Indoors it is the opposite: every single thing you see in the photograph was chosen, and the choice is almost always how hard the light is and where it comes from. That one decision makes a frame soft and warm, or graphic and shadowed, or bright and almost clinical.
Pick the two or three that appeal and send them to us when you enquire. It is a far more useful brief than a mood board, and it changes the room we recommend, the wardrobe we ask you to bring and the shape of the whole afternoon.
Window light
The default, and the one most people meanSoft, directional, warm at the edges, and it costs nothing. A window is a giant soft light source and the only two variables that matter are how far you stand from it and whether there is a sheer curtain across it. Close to the glass with a curtain is the softest light available anywhere. Four metres back with the curtain open is suddenly dramatic.
North facing glass is the prize because it never gets direct sun and therefore never changes character all day. East facing gives you a beautiful hour in the morning. West facing gives you the same in the evening and nothing much in between. It is the first question we ask about any room that is not the studio.
This is the most forgiving look on this list and it is where we start almost every session, including sessions that end up somewhere much more dramatic.
Soft, warm, honest. Quiet rather than staged.
Close to the glass, sheer curtain across it, one white board bouncing back.
A hotel suite, a daylight loft, or your own bedroom mid morning.
Overhead bulbs left on. They fight the window and turn skin an odd colour.
Low key
One light, and everything else falls awayThe most requested look on any boudoir enquiry, and the one people usually cannot name. Dark background, one source of light placed to the side, deep shadow doing most of the work. Skin is lit only where it is turned toward the light and everything else disappears into black.
It is worth knowing why this is the popular one. Low key is by a distance the most covering look available, because you choose exactly what the light finds. Almost every anxiety people bring into the room is solved by moving one light forty centimetres.
It also happens to be the most flattering light in photography for almost every body, which is why every portrait painter for four hundred years lit from one side and slightly above.
Cinematic, private, timeless. High contrast and quite serious.
One light at forty five degrees, dark background, nothing bouncing back.
A first session, and anyone who wants control over what is visible.
The studio. This is the look a studio exists to make.
High key
White on white on whiteThe exact opposite of low key and the second most requested. White background, white sheets, light coming from several directions at once, almost no shadow anywhere. Bright, clean, airy, and it photographs skin the way people hope their skin looks.
It is the look that suits pale winter skin best, it makes a small room feel enormous, and it is the easiest of the six to print large without anything looking heavy on a wall.
The honest trade off: high key hides nothing. There is no shadow to tuck anything into, so it asks for a bit more confidence than low key does, and it is usually the second or third setup of a session rather than the first.
Clean, bright, modern. Editorial rather than moody.
Two lights, white background, everything bounced, almost no shadow.
Prints, albums, and anyone who wants light rather than mood.
It is the least forgiving of the six. Plan it for later in the session.
Hard shadow
Blinds, gaps, and light with edgesSmall light source, hard edges, real black shadows with a defined line. Then we put something in front of it: a venetian blind, a slatted screen, a doorway, a bare branch, a hand. The shadow becomes a pattern that lands across you and the wall behind you.
This is the most graphic look on the list and the most fun. It is also, quietly, extremely covering: a set of blind stripes across a frame hides more than most clothing does, which is why it turns up on almost every boudoir gallery that also has low key in it.
It needs the sun or a hard studio light, so on a grey day in a suite it is off the table and in the studio it is available any afternoon of the year.
Graphic, bold, a bit nineteen seventies. Design as much as portrait.
A hard source through a blind or a cut screen, shadow placed on purpose.
The studio any day, or a sunny suite with venetian blinds.
Grey days kill it outside a studio. Have a second look ready.
Backlit and silhouette
Shape only, and nothing elsePut the light directly behind you and expose for the light rather than for skin. What is left is an outline: hair rimmed in gold, the edge of a shoulder, the shape of a body, and no detail at all. A sheer curtain in front of a bright window does the same thing more softly.
This is the most covered look on the entire page. It is the one to ask for if you want the photographs to exist but you do not want to be identifiable in them, and it is what we shoot first for anyone who is genuinely unsure whether they want to do this at all.
It also produces the frames people are most likely to hang somewhere visible, because a silhouette reads as art in a hallway rather than as a photograph of a person.
Anonymous, graphic, calm. Shape rather than skin.
Light directly behind, exposed for the window, sheer curtain if there is one.
Anyone unsure about being identifiable, and anything going on a wall.
Anywhere with one bright window. This one works in every room on this page.
Candle and lamp
The lights that are already in the roomA bedside lamp, a string of bulbs, a row of candles, the glow from a bathroom doorway. Photographers call these practicals: light sources that are visible inside the frame rather than hidden outside it. They are warm, low, uneven and about as far from studio lighting as it is possible to get, which is exactly the appeal.
This is the look that reads as a film still. It is also the only one on this list that works after dark, which makes it the natural ending to a winter session or an evening suite booking.
One practical note about practicals: swap any cool white bulbs for warm ones beforehand if you are shooting at home. A single daylight bulb in a lamp turns a warm room green and it is the one thing that cannot be fixed properly afterwards.
Warm, low, cinematic. Late evening rather than afternoon.
Lamps and candles in frame, wide open, one tiny light to keep eyes alive.
A hotel suite or your own room, after dark, at the end of a session.
Cool white bulbs. Swap them for warm ones the day before.
Choose how covered you want to be, and the lighting follows from that.
It is the most useful sentence on this page. Backlit and low key hide almost everything, hard shadow hides a surprising amount, window light is honest and soft, and high key hides nothing at all. Tell us where on that scale you want to sit and the lighting plan, the room and the wardrobe list all fall out of it in about a minute.
Vet this one harder than any other booking
For every other kind of session, choosing a photographer is a question of taste. For this one it is a question of judgement, and it is entirely reasonable to be much more demanding about it. Anyone worth booking will be pleased you asked rather than defensive.
Look at their work in full, not the highlights. Ask to see one complete gallery, start to finish, with permission from whoever is in it. A grid of the four best frames tells you they can take four photographs. A whole gallery tells you whether the middle of a session holds up, which is the thing you are actually buying.
Then read their privacy and release terms before you speak to them, not after. If a photographer’s release is a single tick box that grants unlimited use, that is your answer and you have saved yourself a conversation.
At Sunday Media you are working with a small team of seasoned photographers, which is deliberate. Small means the person you speak to is the person who shows up, and on a boudoir session it also means the person who shot it is the only person who edits it. A female photographer is available on request, so ask when you enquire.
The questions worth asking anyone
- Who is in the room, and can I say no to that.
- Can I see the release before I book, and can I decline it entirely.
- Who edits the files, and where are they stored.
- Can I have everything deleted afterwards, and will you confirm in writing.
- Will you show me the back of the camera during the session.
- Can I bring someone.
- What happens if I want to stop halfway through.
Two or three lighting looks
Not a mood board of forty images. Two or three, from the six in the light section above, and one line each on what appeals about them. It calibrates the whole session faster than any amount of describing a feeling in words.
If you have a reference gallery you love, send it. We are not going to copy it, we are going to work out what it is you actually respond to, which is usually the lighting rather than the pose.
The honest brief
How covered you want to be. What you want kept out of frame. What you want deliberately kept in. Whether anyone else is ever going to see these. Whether you have done this before, and how it went if you have.
None of it is oversharing and all of it changes the plan. It is much easier to write in an email than to say out loud in a room, so write it in the email.
The day before
Boudoir prep is a bit different from every other session on this website, because most of it is about skin and almost none of it is about the weather. Two of the lines below are the ones people wish they had known: the hair removal timing, and the elastic.
The night before
The day of
Eat properly, wear the loosest thing you own, arrive with time to spare, and hand the rest of it over at the door.
Shoot day checklist
You did it. Now the good part.
Almost everybody says a version of the same thing on the way out, which is that it was far less excruciating than they had spent three weeks imagining. Go and enjoy that. Get a coffee, go for lunch, sit in the car for ten minutes feeling quietly pleased with yourself.
Then watch your email and whichever channel you told us to use. Nothing arrives anywhere you did not choose.
Confirmation the files are safe
One message telling you the cards are backed up, offline and encrypted, and that nothing was copied anywhere else. It is a small thing and it is the message people say they were most glad to get.
Sneak peeks
A small handful of edited frames, sent only to you, on the channel you asked for. Not posted anywhere, not shown to anyone, not used as an example for the next enquiry. Just yours, two days early.
The full gallery
The complete edited set, delivered to your private gallery on our website with an access code. Exact timing depends on the package you booked and the season, and your photographer will give you the date to expect.
About retouching
This is the part every boudoir page skips, and it is the part people quietly worry about most. Two opposite fears, both reasonable: that nothing will be edited, and that you will be edited into somebody else.
So here is the default, and both directions are yours to change.
Temporary things go
- A spot, a scratch, a bruise, a healing cut. Anything that will not be there in a fortnight.
- Strap marks, elastic lines and the dent from a waistband.
- A stray hair across a face, and flyaways lit from behind.
- Lint on dark fabric, a loose thread, a price tag you both missed.
- Colour, contrast and skin tone balanced properly across the whole set.
- Anything on your out of frame list that lighting could not fully solve on the day.
Permanent things stay
- Body shape. Nothing is narrowed, lifted, smoothed or reshaped by default.
- Stretch marks, cellulite and skin texture.
- Scars, surgical lines, a caesarean line, a mastectomy scar.
- Tattoos, birthmarks, freckles and moles.
- Lines on a face that took years to earn.
If you want any of that changed, ask and we will do it without comment or discussion. It is your photograph and it is your call. The point of the default is that nobody decides on your behalf that something about you needed fixing.
You can request edits from inside your gallery, image by image. Point at the frame, say what you want changed, and it comes back done. That works in both directions: take something out, or put something back that was removed. There is no limit on reasonable requests and no awkwardness about asking, because the whole reason we hold the permanent list to a strict default is so that you get to be the one who decides.
How to open your photos
Your gallery is private and it lives on our own website rather than on a third party platform. Everything you need is in the delivery message: a link, and an access code that looks something like this.
Please do not share your access code with anyone.
On this session more than any other, that code is the whole security model. Anyone holding it can see everything. If you want one specific person to see one specific set of images, tell us and we will build them a separate limited gallery rather than you forwarding your key. If you think the code has gone somewhere it should not have, message us and we reset it the same day.
Fun tutorial: take our easy to use gallery for a spin before your own photos arrive. It is built in house, and the code above is a working demo key opening a set of ordinary sample images. Tap the access code to copy it, then use it on the Your Gallery page.
Go to our website
Open sundaymedia.ca on any device. Phone is fine for looking, a laptop is better for downloading, and a private window is worth the two seconds if you share a device.
Open the menu and choose My Gallery
It is in the main navigation at the top of every page.
Type in your access code
Exactly as it was sent, capitals included. That opens your session and nobody else’s.
Download, request edits, or order an album
Inside the gallery you can download the full resolution files, ask for edits on specific frames in either direction, and order a printed album made from the set. Download everything you want to keep before you ask us to delete anything, because once it is deleted it is gone for us too.
You have read the whole thing. That is usually how this one gets decided.
Tell us the month, how covered you want to be, and which two or three of the six lighting looks you keep coming back to. We will take it from there, in writing, before anything is booked.
Every fee is discussed before payment. Travel, insurance and any studio or suite costs are agreed in writing before the binding contract, so nothing on your invoice is ever a surprise. The model release is a separate document, it is optional, and declining it changes nothing about your session.
BoudoirBoudoirNice one. Want this list to go?
You just checked your first box. We can hand you the whole list as a plain text file, so it lives on your phone instead of in a browser tab you will lose by Thursday.