Kiss your body insecurities goodbye

Isn't it a great feeling to feel the positive evolution in body positivity? Do you guys see it too? From articles I read or friend's conversations, I have the feeling that people and especially women are more self-confident. Man, how powerful is that?! Even though we still have a lot of progress to make, we are slowly getting there.

The importance of confidence

Most of the people I meet know about their qualities and are confident about either their sense of humour, their kindness, their intellect… But I have never met a single person who is in love with 100% of his/her body. We always feel judged, always have the impression people are looking at us. Do you want to know the truth? People don't care… or at least most of them don’t (honestly who cares about judgy people). If you love the way you look and accept what mother nature gave you, it will be easier to conquer the world: being self-confident shows charisma which is a powerful quality to be successful in life.

I never said it will be easy

I am not 100% confident and writing this blog is making me think about the parts of my body I do not like and why I don't like them. Our past traumas are usually the reasons why we are so picky with ourselves.

There are two things I do not like about my body. The first one is my wrists (oh gosh I know it sounds stupid but it is a fact). I see them so tiny and I never been able to like them. Not that I am ashamed and try to hide those wrists but I never felt confident about them. Why? If you have been following us for a little while, you may have read the blog post in which I was writing about my teenagehood and how photography changed the way I see myself. I was a skinny and insecure teenager and kids in my middle school were mean so I got a lot of insults about anorexia. Their words still resonate in me sometimes.

The second thing I do not like is my recent acne. Last February I decided to stop taking my birth control pills to switch for a non hormonal birth control device because I want to take care of my body, go for something more “natural” and stop ingested those crappy hormones. Well I wanted to go natural: I got acnee… Yay! (unhappy smile). Two months after I stoped those pills, I developed a severe acne and felt awful about myself. I totally lost my confidence and sex appeal. Why? Same as previously written, it reminded me when I was fifteen and brought back all of those bad memories.

How to change your mindset

The only way to accept those parts of your body you like the less is to look a them, stop hiding them and talk positively about them. When I look at my wrists I stop telling myself they are too skinny, instead I decided think and say loudly they are cute. For my acne, I try to not use make up to cover the pimples. Every time I look at myself in the mirror, I look at every pimples and tell myself it is not so bad and they will eventually disappear with time.

You can also learn how to highlight and showcase your imperfections. the good news is that it could be fairly easy: you just have to decide to change a negative mindset to a positive one.

GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK AND GO LOVE EVERY FREAKING INCHES OF YOUR BODY!

Work for me but for free - Part 1

We all love to get things for free, right? Such a great feeling! And with Juliette, we hope (in a close future) we will have enough income to be able to accept no-budget projects, but in the meantime we do need to make a living out of photography.

Photography services can look pricey, especially when you are not aware of the amount of work and expenses involved in taking a simple picture. While we love when our clients don’t try to lower our rates, we can also understand when they do. Let us explain:

Photography gear is our biggest investment.

Camera, lenses and studio lights all together can cost the same price as a car:

Cameras = $3000 to $5000
Lense= $600 to $2000
External flash= $600 to $1000
Studio lights= $2000

This is just an average, you can find even more expensive material such as Hasselblad cameras who can be around $15000 (oh the ultimate goal!). You can also add more money for all of the other little accessories such as hard drives, memory cards, filters, tripods, extra batteries…

On top of this, you need to include the repair cost. I fixed my camera and two lenses 6 months ago and the total cost was over $1500.

Don't forget the computer stuff.

Computers are a very important investment for photographers. Except the photoshoot itself, everything happens digitally nowadays: editing, pictures delivery, payment and even customer service. Unfortunately you cannot be a professional photographer without a computer anymore. In order to provide a wonderful and artistic work, we have to invest in great equipment. Since Juliette and I travel a lot (Hello from Rome & Paris!), we needed to invest in a light laptop and each of us paid around $1300.

Let’s not forget about internet. It's a must in our industry and it needs to be fast, so boom, more $$$!

We have to get around.

As photographers, we love to shoot in different places so we need an easy way to travel. When we do not have to carry a lot of equipment and we are not going far, we use public transportation, otherwise we drive. It is more expenses to add on our side: cost of the car, gas, repairs, insurance + the time we spend on the road.

Where we shoot also needs $$$.

As you may already know, a part of our boudoir experience is to shoot in beautiful lofts in Toronto and GTA and we do not rend those places for free. The cost for those type of location can be expensive for us: $100/200 per hour. The price to pay to offer the variety and the quality we do.

Let's not forget...

There is a very simple fact that applies to any person who work for her/himself: if you don’t work you are not paid! Which means, we can’t afford to be sick or take a day off for example. We both work every single day because every little actions we make leads to find new customers and develop our businesses (did you know we do weddings too?), especially since we opened less than a year ago. This hard work also has a cost we need to cover in our pricing.

We are sparing you the taxes and insurance involved in this whole bill too, but yep, there are here too.

This is only the material side of our investment, see you in January for the creative one. Yes our awesomeness has a price too (big smiley face).

With Love.

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How to Avoid NEGATIVE FEEDBACK

Here is the context: you managed to score a gig on a very nice project. You gathered all of your creativity, worked without counting your hours (for the greater good!), maybe ended up losing money rather than making some but you put your heart on the table and did not regret it. Until…

Until you received feedback. Negative feedback. This is when your client took your heart out of your chest and kicked it like it was just a piece of garbage.

I experienced this in the past and I would be lying if I said that I handled it okay and it did not affect me whatsoever.

This unfortunate scenario happens more than you would think and more importantly, hurts a lot more than you would expect. Because it is your craft. Because we are human. Because our visions are different. Because you were not prepared. Because there was a misunderstanding. Thankfully, learning the hard way can also force you to move forward quickly and efficiently.

Since this feeling is definitely something we would rather avoid, here are some leassons that I learnt from this experience:

Get your client's vision

Congratulations, you made the cut, your client believes you have the talent to accomplish their request and are ready to pay you for it! Now it is time to get down to business and understand what the hell they need you to do. Ask for inspiration photos or other examples. Ask as many questions as you need to, to make sure you understand exactly what they are looking for.

Educate your clients

Chances are that whoever will contact you for your services has no knowledge whatsoever on how to do your job. That is probably why they are reaching out at the first place. Now that you have a more precise idea of what they need from you, you MUST evaluate the time and budget allocated for this project and let them know exactly what they will get for this price/time. Is it very unlikely they will get 500 edited photos for one hour of coverage for their event. They probably won't get a very complicated studio lighting for their corporate shoot for $200.

Have a contract

Sounds simple but it actually isn't, at least for me. I got blinded by the excitement, agreed to work fast, didn't take the time to write everything down and have it signed. Bad, bad idea. This can only backfire. Write something that can protect you in case something out of your control was to happen the day of the shoot that would stop you from giving what you were asked.

Explain the final product.

While it does relate to the previous point, I believe it needs a different paragraph. People need to know prior to shoot what they will get at the end. Edited, RAWs, low res, high res, your watch, whatever. This needs to be set in stone. If you have delivering  RAW previews for your clients to choose, it is important to explain that this step is not the final product. Again, they might not know what a RAW photo looks like (and it looks pretty bad usually.). If I REALLY have to show some RAWs - which I try to avoid as much as possible - I like to give an edited example with it to show the before/after process. This also give you a chance to get approval for the editing style you went for.

Charge a fee for additional hours.

Make it worth your time. If after giving exactly what you were asked, you get additional requests, you need to charge for it. This will avoid wasting money on billable hours. And no one likes to waste money.

Let it go.

This is the hardest point for me. And this is still something I need to learn myself. Despite of all your efforts, sometimes it just doesn't work. It happens. If you feel like you gave your best and there is nothing else you can do to adjust the products, it is time to let that boat sail away. There is only so much you can do. It doesn't make you a terrible artist, it just means that people are different. Take what you can from it and move on.

That's it dearest Scandals. Now go work on new amazing projects and blow people's mind, we are right behind you.
Love,

When the photographer becomes the model

You know we care. You know we would do anything to treat you the best possible way. We know there is always room from improvement. That's why we decided to put one of the Scandals-En-Chef - Juliette - on the other side of the lense for a change, to experience fully what it is like to be half naked in front of a camera.

Dear little Scandals,

Both of us went to Costa Rica last February to participate in an amazing Aerial Silks retreat. We stayed in a beautiful lodge and totally took advantage of it. We woke up early morning before the heat made us sweat more than usual and off we went, shooting!

Disclaimer : Like many women and men, I have always had body issues. They are like ghosts from my 14-year-old self when I was hiding my face with long bangs and wearing horrible push-up bras, and other uncomfortable attire to pretend my body was something it wasn't. Over the years, I became "okay" with my reflection in the mirror. Not hating it, not loving it either. While working out has helped me a lot, I still have to battle my demons here and there. This shoot was a huge challenge that I set for myself.

Now, buckle-up, you are about to jump in my head...

7:01 am - Today is the day. Can I catch up on years of non-squatting in 2 minutes?
7:02 am - Probably not. At least we are doing this before breakfast. No swollen belly, yay!
7:05 am - My hands are shaking and my buttcheeks will too. Why did I think this would be a good idea?
7:06 am - Shoot boudoir sessions they say, it will be fun they say….
7:08 am - Enough talking to yourself, more getting ready.
7:30 am - Hair? Decent. Make-up? Complete. Wardrobe? Minimal. Sex-appeal? In process.
7:35 am - I am SO ready for this.
7:38 am - Here we goooo.
7:40 am - Wait, what am I supposed to do? Listening to Fanny should be a good start.
7:45 am - I have to contract my abs.
7:50 am - Daaaaamn, I feel like a sex bomb.
7:55 am - I have never been this self-conscious about sitting on a bed. How do people sit on beds and look naturally sexy?
7:56 am - American movies are full of lies.
7:58 am - What the hell should I do with my arms? What do normal people do with arms? The human body has way too many parts.
7:59 am - Hold the pose, hold the pose, hold the pose.
8:00 am - Worth it. Looks sick. Let's do more!
8:15 am - I have never arched my back this much before. Flexibility here I come.
8:17 am - The garderner is taking a hell lot of time to pick up his lime on that patio here. Enjoy the show buddy.
8:25 am - I am getting the hang of this.
8:27 am - Call me Sexy Beast from now on please.
8:30 am - More! More! More!
8:32 am - Bra's off. I am a savage. Free the nipples!
8:37 am - There is something very cool about walking around breast-naked, let me tell you.
9:00 am - Wait, it's already over?

What I learned from this experience:

This shoot confirmed everything I thought would happen and more. I blanked for basic poses, went from feeling vulnerable, super nervous and questioning everything I did to jumping around, boobs au naturel. It is amazing how fast you become aware of your own body when it is the main focus. Every natural movement does NOT feel natural anymore for no reason.

Thankfully, I did not have to do too much thinking with Fanny guiding me every step of the way. I felt more and more comfortable after the first 5 minutes and was completely at ease by the end of the session. Even better, I am actually super proud of myself for accomplishing this.

This session also helped me become a better photographer. I am even more aware of what a model needs to hear in order to feel taken care of.

Conclusion: Will definitely do it again!

Things you should know:

• Your photographer (aka us!) does NOT judge your appearance. That is not what we are here for.
• It does take guts to pose half naked in front of a stranger. That's why we make a point of ensuring you are 100% comfortable with us, our personalities and the way we work.
• Posing you is part of our job. You shouldn't worry about having to come up with poses by yourself.
• You are allowed to say no. I personally felt comfortable enough to show my breasts.  Maybe you won't, and that's okay.
• Make the most of your session and have fun. You've come this far, you might as well go fierce!

This makes me happy for what we are currently doing with you Little Scandals.

Love,

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