That was Sunday, Sept 13. (Yes, every 7 years we have a Friday the 13 anniversary, fun, right?)
I was 20 when I married Jan. Did not even own a camera then. Three years later, I borrowed hers to start a distracting hobby from my 24/7 job. I started photographing women.
In 1980, Inner Spirit Photography was born, and I became a pioneer in the North American boudoir photography niche.
By 1984, Jan was a full-time working partner. She was both my work wife and my wife wife. We loved it.
We were considered the first home-based professional photography studio. No other studio in Canada was a boudoir photography studio, so on both counts, the professional photography community was not too sure what to think about us.
Calgary was a very different city in 1980, with only 204,000 dwellings
Jan made all our clients instantly comfortable. They became like family. Our relationship was and remains so powerful that our female clients felt deeply safe. They could tell my passion was to make them feel and look amazing. It was obvious that Jan supported that 100%.
Jan was never a spotlight seeker; she was, and is, the woman behind the man guiding our success. She influenced our marketing look and the company values. We worked trade shows together. Jan was incredible at booking sessions. She was a powerful voice in our radio ads.
Early on Jan was trained in makeup and hair styling so our clients could look their stunning best and feel it. Jan transitioned them into their boudoir and usually nude experience.
At the time, Glamour Photography, over-the-top makeup, and hairstyles were common, almost standard. Jan’s approach was more natural, timeless.
She was always an artist, so retouching negatives and our prints was a natural move. Now imagine this. At a retouching course, students brought in studio prints in the size they usually worked on. Most brought in 5x7s and 8x10s. For us, 30×40-inch images were common. Jan brought one of our nude portraits she was working on.
The instructor and students were stunned by the size, which was rare back then, and that it was a nude, which was also very rare.
What Jan did back then, working on negatives, then later large slides, was, under a microscope, to retouch the negative. When the print came back, she would soften that retouching.
I believe it takes a special relationship to not just survive but flourish when not just your work life and home life, but your work space and home space are entwined so inseparably.
We embraced the digital transition in photography, with Jan becoming one of the first portrait retouchers to work digitally using a massive Wacom tablet.
51 years, wow, it has been a blink. It has been so comfortable, so rewarding. Frankly, it amazes me every time I hug her in the kitchen how lucky I have been.
I know this has probably been an unexpected slant on our 51st anniversary, especially because it is not even a milestone in its own right.
But I so rarely get an opportunity to really show how much Jan has meant to Inner Spirit Photography, to the women I’ve photographed, and to me.
It was Jan who urged me to leave my high-income job for what she saw clearly as my passion path. She saw the growing number of women coming to us, to our home and how my photography was changing their lives.
Knowing that our home would become the studio, where women would feel comfortable, she embraced that future.
When I had clients booking me from around the world, over 16 countries, she quietly packed me and sent me on. Handling business at home while I was gone. She joined me for a few trips, which was a delight.
Jan even indulged me a few times to be the model in some of my early marketing. Reluctantly . . . that was way too much spotlight for her.
She has helped me win awards, plan strategy, and nurture boudoir photography; she was a founder of the boudoir movement for women as much as I am,
I thought you might enjoy a personal moment in my stories that gives you some insight behind the camera.
All that and more is what was behind our 51st Anniversary. The lead-up, you might say.
It has been incredible.
