Hello….It’s me!

I totally stole the blog title from Adele. Sorry, I’m slightly in love with her new song and have it on repeat as I try to stumble upon writing this blog post. Adele really has nothing to do with what I’m about to write so let me circle back to the point.

Hello…It’s me. Courtney. Mid/Late 20’s. Obsessed with the Big Bang Theory. Dog mom to my mix breed pooch, Maddie. Lover of sunshine and bright colors. Owner of my own business Courtney Tompson Photography A.K.A Boudoir by Courtney (but you probably already know that, I mean you are on my blog after all). Hi. Hello. Hola.

In addition to all those things I’m also, self-consious. Body hater. My own worst enemy. Seer of all the bad things that make up Courtney. My entire life I have been told I was pretty, beautiful, even on a recent trip to Ireland a little Irish man called me GORGEOUS! The truth is though I’ve never been able to see it.

I’ve wanted to write this blog post for a long time explaining to everyone (the world I guess since it’s going live on the world wide web) why I shoot boudoir. I shoot boudoir to show women exactly what I struggle to see in myself.  To show them how the world sees them. It’s my way of saying, “YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL” (Inside & Out). And as much as I want every woman to step in front of my camera so I can show them how FUCKING (sorry, mom it was necessary to describe my emphasis) AWESOME they are, sometime the person that needs it the most is me.

Last year I went to San Fransisco to do a workshop with the crazy talented Modern Love Photography. I’ve actually previously blog posted about my wonderful experience at the workshop here. The part I never mentioned was that I also had my own shoot with Denise. It’s not that I’ve been fearful to show my pictures to the world. Truthfully in that way I’m not shy. I love my images. And they’re classy and sassy and totally fantastic! However, I knew if I posted them, I needed to attach words to the post and that requires being vulnerable in another way. The way that is far from easy for me.

Lately I’ve been having a little bit of a hard time. This year has just been a crazy roller coaster ride of emotions and new happenings and I’m starting to reach my boiling point. Those voices in my head are on full blast yelling all the horrible, self doubting, despicable things about me that I just can’t seem to shake. Today I pulled out my photos and am reminding myself that sometimes I am in fact a pretty bad ass chick. I may not fully be on board with that train of thought yet, but I’m ready to yell it to the world (or whoever reads this blog) until it shakes all those voices. That’s why I do this job. Maybe for you a boudoir session isn’t the way to go about it, and that’s perfectly fine. Maybe you’re doing a boudoir session solely to impress your hubby and that’s fine too. My hope though is that when we work together that I can become the friend, that if you need, tells those voices of self-doubt, self-hate, etc. to F*** off! Because let’s be serious, you’re fabulous!

We are all awesome. We are all pretty bad ass. Now let’s take off the masks and go show the world.

Also please ignore the typos that I undoubtedly made. This was hard for me to write. Had I proof read my ramblings to make sure it was grammatically correct, I would have been a chicken and decided not to post!