Friday, June 3, 2016

As you can imagine, all this cancer shit has been fairly overwhelming, and has taken a while to mentally process.  I’m staying focused on my silver lining, and looking forward to having a perky pair at the end of all this. But since being big-busted has really been a part of my identity for my whole adult life, I felt the need to do something to document The Girls in their full, beautiful bodaciousness.

So last week, I had the brilliant idea to do a professional photo shoot.  After some Googling, I learned that this type of shoot is called “boudoir photography” (who knew?)  As I searched around, there seemed to be two general styles: artsy, sultry shots, that most people seem to be do around the time of their wedding; and sexy pinup shots.  The worst of the last type (in my opinion) involved black backdrops, stilettos, and lacy leather corsets.  They looked like they were trying out to be on the cover of an ’80s metal band album.

I kept Googling.  Eventually I zeroed in on the style I was looking for, and picked Debra to be my photographer.  The fact that her home landing page had both “Photography” and “Adventurer” buttons clinched it for me.

We scheduled the photo shoot for Friday, June 3.  Debra and her hair/makeup artist (whose name is Erica!) arrived promptly at 6am.  I set us up in the guest room, where I’d placed a few outfits and bras that I thought would work.  Erica got her tools set up while I showed Debra around the yard.

First, Erica curled my hair, then applied my makeup.  The hair came out great.  The makeup took a reallllly long time (I’m glad I’m not an actor and have to do that every day).  I’m not sure how well I liked the makeup; I think she did a good job, and it was definitely soft and natural, but very different from my own makeup routine.  We’ll see how it comes out in the photos.

The photo shoot itself was fun.  We tried out different locations around the yard.  Our yard is not very private, so we had to be a bit surreptitious about topless shots, but I’m pretty sure I did not give too much of a peep show to the neighbors.  Debra loved our new yoga platform and we took a lot of shots there.  We also had fun in the living room, doing a few silly shots a la Beauty And The Beast on the library ladder.