Client Stories

She Wanted Him to Always Remember Her This Way.

Some of you may have already heard this story in my VIP Facebook group or on my email list. But it deserves a permanent home. It deserves to be here — where anyone searching for a boudoir photographer might find it, and maybe find themselves in it too.

---

Roseana — BombShell Boudoir — May 24, 2024

There are sessions that stay with you. Not just in your portfolio, not just in your camera roll — but in the place where the most important moments of your life live. Roseana’s session lives there for me.

She booked during a Black Friday sale, and when she first reached out she was excited — the way clients get when they’ve been wanting to do something for themselves for a long time and finally decided to go for it. She didn’t lead with her diagnosis. She led with joy.

What she shared with me as we got to know each other was this: Roseana had been living with Stage Four metastatic breast cancer for five years. She booked her session because she wanted to capture herself — fully, beautifully, exactly as she was — while her body still felt like her own. She wanted one day that was just about being a woman. Not a patient. Not a fighter. Just her.

She also told me something I will carry forever. She wanted to leave her husband with images he could always look at and know exactly who she was. Radiant. Sensual. Her.

— — —

Her session day started the way all BombShell sessions do — in the hair and makeup chair. And that’s where she really opened up.

There’s something about that chair. The way it feels to be taken care of — to have someone doing your hair while soft music plays and the world outside doesn’t exist for a little while. Women tell me things in that chair they haven’t told anyone. And Roseana did too. She talked about her kids. Her husband. What she wanted them to remember. What she hoped the pictures would say when she no longer could.

We cried. I won’t pretend we didn’t. It would have been impossible not to.

But then — and this is the part that tells you everything about who Roseana was — she wiped her eyes, looked at herself in the mirror, and decided that this day was going to be a good day. A happy memory. Not a sad one.

And that’s exactly what we made it.

She wanted it to be a happy memory. And it was.

We laughed — a lot. She was funny and warm and lit up every single frame. She moved through that session like a woman who had decided, fully and completely, to be present. To enjoy every moment of it. And she did.

By the time we were done, it felt less like a photo session and more like one of those rare days you know you’ll never forget while it’s still happening.

— — —

Two weeks after her session, Roseana lost her hair. She went back on chemo.

In June, she left this review:

On October 23rd, 2024, Roseana passed away. She left behind her husband Bob and their two young children.

Her husband reached out to me not long after. He told me she had loved the entire experience. That they sat together and looked through her album and had so much fun. That the pictures were truly beautiful. He called them a wonderful gift — from her, to all of them.

I think about Roseana often. I think about her in the makeup chair, opening up. I think about her laughing on set, deciding that this day was going to be a good one. I think about the images her family has now — images that captured her at her most alive, her most herself.

She didn’t book a photo session. She left something behind that will never fade.

That is why I do this work.

Boudoir photography isn’t about vanity. It isn’t about being a certain size or looking a certain way or having a perfect reason. It’s about the radical, powerful act of saying: I am here. I am beautiful. I matter. Right now, exactly as I am.

Roseana knew that. She showed up for herself even when it was hard — especially when it was hard. And because she did, her husband and her children have something that no amount of time will take away.

If you’ve been putting off booking. If you keep telling yourself you’ll do it when you lose the weight, when things calm down, when the timing is right — I hope her story gives you permission to stop waiting. The timing is never perfect. Now is always the right time.

This story is shared with deep love and respect for Roseana and her family. ❤️
BombShell Boudoir — 6427 KY-146, Suite 6, Crestwood, KY