Imagine going naked to a Halloween party.
Would you do it?
Let me “flesh out” my question a bit more.
Suppose you had a second skin on?
You arrive naked at this party, but not stepped-out-of-the-shower naked. More like stepped-out-of-a-Halloween-body-paint-session naked.
These women did.
It was liberating, exhilarating and very, very bold of them.
I’ve seen video stories documenting women wearing only body painted clothes going to a restaurant’s patio. It is wild that of all of the diners, no one, not even the waiter, realized they were nude. Usually, it’s revealed when they spill a glass of water on their cleavage causing the paint ran, revealing the disguise.
The hidden documenting camera captures everyone’s expressions: the waiter, patrons at nearby tables, and in one, a passerby who walked into a streetlamp. The sudden awareness is very amusing.
I can imagine the details growing with the telling. But it does bring up to a practical point.
If you do this then go to that party, be careful of spilled drinks.
Oh, and watch what you bump into, where you sit, who you hug . . . that sort of thing. Paint can smudge and rub off.
Now, can you imagine it? Let me help.
The most ghoulish rendering covers you from hairline to toe tips. You’ve just finished being photographed here at Inner Spirit Photography by me, Mark Laurie. Your painted alter ego immortalized in the most creative way.
You’ve become comfortable in your second skin, wandering around the studio, being photographed, expressing the most dynamic side of this creature you’ve become.
Somewhere between the first brushstroke and the final photograph, you’ve slipped fully into your body painted character. You have fully transformed, and have become a little bit fearless.
Then, could you head off to a dimly lit Halloween party where everyone is in costume? Most are almost anonymous beneath their disguises.
Just as you are beneath yours. You are as incognito as you can get.
Would you be so bold? Grab that moment and blend into the crowd of fellow monsters and wonderfully disguised creatures?
For a woman who arrived feeling shy about even being photographed, that would be quite a transformation of both body and spirit.
Over my years photographing women, I’ve seen how a boudoir or nude session embolden women. Boudoir photography, at its core, is transformative. The bolder you go, from dresses to layers of lingerie to skimpy lingerie to nudes, the more pronounced it becomes.
I have a process, refined over46 years, you don’t just leap into the deep end first.
We start with the regular session before the body painting. Going to your pace. It frees up your spirit and subtly readies you for the bolder body painting step.
Then you are the body painters canvas. Transformations take time, 2 to 4 hours watching your body vanish into an alter ego. At the end, with a detailed flurish, you have become a new character.
An odd experience, to be sure.
It becomes play. And sometimes, that freedom to play lets a woman express something she usually keeps tucked away.
Boudoir or nude portraits give you power, always have. You stretch your comfort zone, your confidence and it never shrinks back to what it was. Body painting expands it even more.
That shy, tiny woman in the mummy wrapping? It was her first time being photographed nude and her first time being body painted.
She loved it.
Our Cruella is a fright, a far cry from the woman inside that evil skull. She is as sweet and playfully fun as you could imagine.
If you saw our mummy woman at a costume party, would you look at her any longer than you would at someone in another elaborate costume?
Would you even realize?
There’s a rush in stepping out that boldly. In discovering you can do something that, a few hours earlier, might have seemed quite beyond you.
I will share that very few of our clients take their painted characters out to a party. It is far more popular going home in “costume” to an unsuspecting partner.
But for the few who do, wow, do they have a story to tell.
A story that builds their legend.
