“Bomb­shells!” That's how boudoir pho­tog­ra­ph­er and make-up artist Jaime Ram­per­sad calls her clients and that's how they look and feel af­ter a ses­sion at her stu­dio, she be­lieves.

“Boudoir” refers to a woman's pri­vate room or sa­loon, and boudoir pho­tog­ra­phy cen­tres on in­ti­mate por­traits of main­ly women, of­ten with an artis­tic and glam­orous flair.

Pho­to­shoot themes gen­er­al­ly range from play­ful and sul­try to vin­tage and fine art-nude. But Ram­per­sad's less than con­ven­tion­al pho­to­shoots are on the more con­ser­v­a­tive side of the risqué spec­trum, she as­sured Sun­day Guardian in a re­cent in­ter­view.

They are meant to cap­ture the in­ner and out­er beau­ty of women, boost­ing their con­fi­dence, bright­en­ing their mood and the way in which they view them­selves, and beau­ty in gen­er­al.

Her clients are most­ly mid­dle-aged women of wide-rang­ing body types which adds an­oth­er el­e­ment of unique­ness to Ram­per­sad's non-tra­di­tion­al art.

The pho­tog­ra­ph­er is no stranger to stand­ing out from the crowd, how­ev­er. She was the first to in­tro­duce air­brush make-up artistry to T&T and blends in her 18 years of ex­pe­ri­ence to her boudoir shoots, some­times adding her hair­styling skills as a bonus.

Aware that many would have reser­va­tions about her type of artis­tic work, Ram­per­sad said she shows un­der­stand­ing about how women feel when they en­ter her stu­dio–of­ten shy but cu­ri­ous–and she strives to do shoots based on each client's com­fort lev­el.

Her clients are free to choose their own out­fits and most use the ex­pe­ri­ence and pho­tos for them­selves as keep­sakes; to cel­e­brate their own bod­ies. For women who have a hard time em­brac­ing their nat­ur­al beau­ty and for those who, in the hus­tle and bus­tle of life, have lost touch with their in­ner selves, it al­lows them to see them­selves in a dif­fer­ent light, re­mind­ing some of their pos­i­tive traits and re­veal­ing such qual­i­ties to oth­ers who nev­er knew they had them in the first place.

An example of Rampersad's boudoir photography work

Jason Baptiste

For the per­son in front of the cam­era, do­ing a boudoir pho­to­shoot can be, in essence, life-chang­ing, Ram­per­sad felt. A pic­ture trans­mits emo­tions and as­pects of one's per­son­al­i­ty. As her boudoir shoots teach clients the im­pact of their body lan­guage on oth­ers in every­day life and in busi­ness, the con­fi­dence gained is of­ten chan­nelled in­to oth­er ar­eas of their lives. It helps them to go af­ter their goals, im­prove in­ti­ma­cy with their part­ners and al­so serves as a form of re­lax­ation and es­cape.

Her shoots have im­pact­ed Ram­per­sad her­self. They have af­ford­ed her free­dom of ex­pres­sion and a chance to do what she loves while em­pow­er­ing women. She is al­so hap­py to help trans­form so­ci­ety's im­age of what beau­ty looks like.

Her work over the last nine years is a far cry from her days in Hous­ton, Texas, where she felt con­strained work­ing with pho­tog­ra­phers to build her port­fo­lio as a make-up artist. Back then, Ram­per­sad felt she was not get­ting the types of shots to do jus­tice to the make-up work she did on clients. As her in­ter­est in pho­tog­ra­phy de­vel­oped, she was able to ob­tain her cer­ti­fi­ca­tion as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er and start­ed do­ing both make-up and pho­to­shoots for most­ly friends.

In 2015, she moved back to Trinidad with her fam­i­ly and re­vamped her busi­ness, of­fer­ing a com­plete ser­vice of pho­tog­ra­phy, make-up and hair­styling. Ini­tial­ly fo­cussing on por­trait pho­tog­ra­phy, she then be­gan to spe­cialise in boudoir pho­tog­ra­phy.

Apart from de­scrib­ing Ram­per­sad's friend­ly dis­po­si­tion and abil­i­ty to put them at ease, clients on Ram­per­sad's pri­vate Face­book page who gave re­views com­mend­ed the ex­pe­ri­ence that the pho­tog­ra­ph­er of­fers, with many re­port­ing that it was taste­ful­ly done and set them on a jour­ney of self-love.

Boudoir photographer and airbrush makeup artist, Jaime Rampersad

Matthew Dahoo

One woman who had strug­gled with di­vorce and weight is­sues talked about how “en­light­ened”, “em­pow­ered” and “de­sir­able” she felt af­ter a pho­to­shoot, an­oth­er about how “fun” it was to see her­self in a “sexy and glam­orous” light, while an­oth­er said she was hap­py to fi­nal­ly see her­self in the pos­i­tive way oth­ers saw her.

Q&A with Jaime Ram­per­sad

How do women in T&T gen­er­al­ly re­spond to your type of pho­tog­ra­phy?

One mis­con­cep­tion is that boudoir pho­tog­ra­phy has to be about skimpy clothes and lin­gerie or even nu­di­ty, but the type that I do is catered to the com­fort lev­el of my clients. If a client says I want to use nor­mal cloth­ing, we def­i­nite­ly do that. I have done boudoir shoots with just a white but­ton-down shirt and those have been some of the most beau­ti­ful shots. Some­times women are scared to voice their opin­ions about want­i­ng to do a shoot of this na­ture be­cause they feel they will be ridiculed, but I have built a safe space (on­line) where it's all about up­lift­ing and em­pow­er­ing each oth­er.

Is it that you show women that their body type doesn't mat­ter?

Ex­act­ly! I am a size-in­clu­sive stu­dio so that's one of the things I want to high­light too, that boudoir pho­tog­ra­phy is not lim­it­ed to peo­ple with a cer­tain body type. I serve clients that are all dif­fer­ent sizes. Al­so, most of my clients are over 40, so it's not on­ly for young women.

When you think about boudoir you don't think about those things. The method­ol­o­gy I use when I'm coach­ing and di­rect­ing clients in their shoot, I'm not just pos­ing their bod­ies, but their body lan­guage as well. What this does is cre­ate im­ages that al­low women to see the in­ner part of their beau­ty. Body lan­guage is how we're able to show our in­ner beau­ty. It's the in­vis­i­ble mag­net­ic force that draws us to some peo­ple, but re­pels us from oth­ers, so body lan­guage is im­por­tant in get­ting the shot that re­al­ly cap­ti­vates oth­ers.

So does this help in en­sur­ing that the pieces end up look­ing like art?

Ab­solute­ly! I want women to look at them­selves as wor­thy of be­ing pieces of art.

Do you have any ex­am­ples you can speak about of women who per­haps came in with is­sues and had suc­cess sto­ries?

Def­i­nite­ly. There have been clients who would have left their boudoir ses­sion feel­ing re­al­ly em­pow­ered and it gave them that con­fi­dence to put them­selves out there for their busi­ness­es. That is one thing I see re­oc­cur­ring. Some of them have small busi­ness­es–not that they put their boudoir pic­tures as their busi­ness pic­tures ob­vi­ous­ly–but just the idea of be­ing seen as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of their busi­ness is some­thing they be­come more open to, bold­er about.

Even in terms of their re­la­tion­ships, per­son­al life, they get a lot of con­fi­dence. They may be more open with their part­ners. Some of them say I don't usu­al­ly wear lin­gerie and when they come in and get to try on dif­fer­ent pieces–be­cause I do have a client's clos­et and they get to bring in their stuff too–I give them lit­tle tips on how to wear this and what looks bet­ter for their bod­ies, it re­al­ly opens new doors for them. They get re­al­ly ex­cit­ed and I think that re­al­ly helps them.

So a lot of it is make-up and the en­tire styling of the out­fit?

I of­fer the com­plete ex­pe­ri­ence, so one of the things, when clients come in, is that they need to feel good be­fore tak­ing a good pic­ture. One of the ways of mak­ing them feel good is by mak­ing them look good. It starts with prep­ping them with the air­brush make-up and once they see that and they see they look more beau­ti­ful, they feel more con­fi­dent. This al­lows them to be a bit more open when they are in front of the cam­era.

How does air­brush make-up dif­fer from typ­i­cal make-up?

Oh my gosh, air­brush make-up is amaz­ing. I've been do­ing it since 2004 and I was ac­tu­al­ly the first to in­tro­duce it to Trinidad back then. It gives you a flaw­less fin­ish...lit­er­al­ly drops of make-up for an en­tire face, but you get max­i­mum cov­er­age and it still looks like skin so it pho­tographs beau­ti­ful­ly. It is the best of all of the make-ups, hon­est­ly speak­ing.

Does your propen­si­ty for the arts come from your child­hood, did any­thing in your child­hood in­spire you to be a cre­ative?

What in­spired me is when I was lit­tle, I used to look at my moth­er ap­ply make-up every day for work. And that just in­trigued me. I al­ways re­mem­ber her red lip­stick, till this day she loves a red lip. I nev­er thought about it as a ca­reer un­til I was 24. I woke up one morn­ing and lit­er­al­ly said: I want to be a make-up artist...just like that. And this was af­ter I had fin­ished do­ing my de­gree in In­for­ma­tion Sys­tems and Man­age­ment, so it's some­thing to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent.

In terms of the busi­ness as­pect, how suc­cess­ful has this type of pho­tog­ra­phy been?

It's some­thing that you have to work at, es­pe­cial­ly in the ear­ly days. You can't just open up a busi­ness and not have to work re­al­ly hard to get it to a cer­tain lev­el. It takes a lot of work and you should be re­al­ly pas­sion­ate about it.

Jaime Ram­per­sad is @jaimer­am­per­sad­make­u­partistry on Face­book