Digital Boudoir Photography : A Step-by-step Guide to ... - Ken Gilbert

Background
The sensual depiction of the human female
form has been around since cavemen first picked up a piece of charcoal to draw on the
wall of a cave. The history of painting is filled with images of women, often portrayed
nude or seminude. Early photographers began creating nudes as “artist studies” to get
around the moral codes of the day. They would create packets of cards of women in
various poses supposedly for artists to use. Photographic albums of nudes appeared
around 1890 in France. Then, about 1900, the French postcard was born and sold in
secret in shops throughout Paris. These first “sexy” pictures were really a production
operation. They were not concerned with the quality of the costumes, models, location,
props, or posing. The photographs just had to be sexy and usually have some
nudity in them. In 1888, the first camera for amateurs, the Kodak, came out. This
allowed anyone to create photographs for the first time without having to deal with all
of the chemicals.
According to Carla and Bob Calkins, owners of Motherlode Photography, a professional
photography studio in Diamond Springs, California, they invented the term
“boudoir portrait” in early 1980 after photographing a client who had trouble describing
that she wanted a portrait created with only some of her clothes on. They were
looking for a term that offered more elegance than “erotic portrait,” “seminude portrait,”
or “sexy portrait.” They chose “boudoir” because it was a French word meaning
bedroom. Early boudoir portraits mainly featured women wearing lingerie in bedroom
locations. Since then it has grown and grown.