Boudoir photographer Samantha Eppel’s shoot this past October was an intimate affair: just her client, her client’s friend, and a dozen North Shore triathletes.
Ez Powers, a queer photographer who specializes in boudoir for all bodies, races, and genders, has also taken to staging shoots outdoors near their home and studio in McHenry County, although they had to curb the practice when hunting season began this fall.
While Hansen was ultimately able to secure a Paycheck Protection Program loan and has since reopened, she says she’s still only shooting one person per day to allow time for sanitizing and disinfecting.
“Boudoir in general used to be something that was rather taboo,” Eppel says. That’s changed over the last five years as the industry has come to focus more on body positivity and self-empowerment, she says.
Although there’s nothing wrong with more traditional boudoir shots too, Powers says, if it helps make people feel better about themselves. It’s a sentiment that others in the industry seem to share.
