This is Gina. She was one of my first friends when I moved to SF and she is getting married in August. She currently lives in NY, but for her bachelorette party she decided to come Sonoma for a wine country weekend. Gina is one of the most positive and full of life people I have ever met. Life is always fun for Gina, so we wanted to plan a fun, Gina appropriate, weekend.

We did the whole wine tasting thing on Saturday and Gina wore her veil with plastic male body parts all day.

(holga photos: click photo to enlarge)

But we wanted something more…. something more memorable…. so as a surprise, we hired a burlesque dancer to come and teach us some moves (we thought it was a little more realistic than the pole dancing trend, seeing as not many of us have access to poles on a regular basis.) To help create the mood, the teacher wanted us in “appropriate clothing,” so we needed an excuse to tell Gina, why we had to dress up in boas, fishnets and slips.

Leave it to me, the photo obsessed, I decided the perfect solution would be to have a boudoir photo shoot beforehand, because Gina loves taking photos, and I thought she would enjoy getting to play. So we all bought her something fun to wear and we dressed her up. She pretended to protest a little, but eventually she gave in and had the Gina fun we were hoping for

The hardest part was getting everyone else to change into their sultry side. I would say this is a pretty conservative and modest group, so it took a little pushing and encouraging, but eventually everyone played along, got over their insecurities and we laughed a lot. And now everyone has a portrait as a souvenir of the weekend, which is an added bonus.

So if you are trying to think of something fun for your friend’s next bachelorette party, let me know, paige green the boudoir photo shoot photographer extraordinaire, is willing to travel.

(click photo to enlarge)

As a study in portraits… I love the comparison between these two. They are both so powerful and so different, even though the information in the photos is minimal… it is all about body language and eye contact. I am having fun with formal portraiture and I am slowly getting more comfortable at giving directions and slowing down…. yay for my Rolleiflex.