Nashville Combo Photoshoot: Boudoir, Branding and Portraits in One Session
You have a blazer you wear when you need to be taken seriously. A sweater you live in on Sunday mornings. And something silk folded in the back of a drawer, waiting for its moment.
Every one of those is you, and each deserves its own frame.
My combo photoshoot asks for all three. In one session at my Nashville studio in Marathon Village, you bring 3-5 outfits and we photograph the woman you are at work, the woman you are at home, and the woman you are when the door is closed. Branding, portrait and boudoir, in a single afternoon.
Years of watching women move through those outfit changes taught me something. Confidence shows up as a byproduct of feeling safe. The combo session is built to honor every facet of who you are and create that safety one look at a time.
The Nashville Combo Photoshoot Is Built Like a Staircase
A combo session moves in one continuous arc, and the order of the looks is where the magic lives.
We start where you already feel strong. Then we move closer, look by look, toward the version of you that rarely gets a camera pointed at her. By the time we get there, you have spent two hours being directed, laughed with and being hyped up. Your shoulders have dropped. You stopped thinking about your to-do list an hour ago.
That is the whole design. Each outfit earns the next one.
You Start in the Outfit That Already Works
The first look is almost always your professional one because it the one you think you need most. The blazer, the dress you wear to speak on a panel, the outfit you would want on your website and your LinkedIn.
This is the personal branding photography portion of the session, and it is the easiest place to begin because you already know how to stand in it. You wear this version of yourself every week. We are simply getting it on record.
If you have been weighing a quick headshot against something fuller, I wrote about the difference between headshots and a personal branding session. A combo session gives you the branding images and keeps going.
You Soften Into the Woman Your People Know
Look two is the portrait. Jeans and a great sweater, or a dress you love for no professional reason at all, the one that makes you stand a little differently when you catch it in a window. The earrings your daughter always asks to borrow or even an heirloom piece from your mom that is meaningful to you.
These are the images your family will keep. They are the modern portraits that end up framed in a hallway or printed for a mother who has been asking for a good photo of you for years.
There is a line I hear in nearly every reveal: "I don't have a single picture of myself that I actually like until now." This part of the session hands her a dozen.
You Arrive at the Version of You That Rarely Gets Photographed
The final looks are boudoir. Lingerie, a robe, an oversized button-down, a bodysuit, or a bed sheet that covers you but gives the suggestion of intimacy. You decide how far we go, and you can change your mind in the moment.
It lands last on purpose. By the time you step into that final look, you have already seen yourself on the screen four or five times. Your hair and makeup has held up beautifully. You trust my direction, because it has been working all afternoon.
By then, the boudoir photography part of a combo session feels like the obvious next step. I love watching that moment arrive.
Every Version of You Belongs in One Gallery
One session, one round of hair and makeup, one reveal. You walk out with images for your website, images for your walls, and images that are entirely yours.
I went deeper on this idea in boudoir and branding: one session, two sides of you. The short version: you have always been all of these women.
What to Wear for a Combo Photoshoot
Planning 3-5 outfits sounds like a lot. It gets easier once you think in chapters of the session and pull from your closet one chapter at a time. I also send you an extensive prep guide with images. This guide is a compilation of every questions I’ve been asked in the pat 14 years.
The arc I usually suggest:
Look 1, branding: a blazer, a structured dress, or whatever you would wear to your most important meeting. Solid colors photograph best.
Look 2, portrait: something soft and touchable. Knits, denim, a favorite dress. Think about what your family would recognize as you.
Look 3, bridge: an oversized men's shirt, a slip dress, or a sweater worn off one shoulder. This is the look that carries you from portrait into boudoir.
Looks 4 and 5, boudoir: lingerie, a bodysuit, a robe, or a sheet. Bring more than you think you will use. We will choose together.
Hang everything on its own hanger and bring shoes for the branding look. On your pre-shoot Zoom consult, we go through it piece by piece, and answer any additional questions you may have so nothing is a guess on the day. My guide on how to prepare for your photoshoot covers the rest.
What Happens on Your Photoshoot Day
When you arrive, you will walk into the studio that feels warm and inviting. You will smell lavender and rosemary and be reminded of a spa. There will be a welcome sign to welcome you. The stage is set for you to drop your worries and let us care for and pamper you.
First, we will go through your outfits and put them in order. Then we talk through hair and makeup preferences with our makeup artist. And before we get started, the only other decision that you have to make that day is what music would you like to listen to.
As you sit down in the makeup chair, and the afternoon starts there. You will be pampered with professional hair and makeup then we move through your looks in order that I determined while you were getting hair and makeup. You literally just show up. We’ve got the rest.
A couple of weeks later, you come back for the reveal where you see your images for the first time on the big screen and choose the ones you love. Most people get a Collections come in 10, 20 or 30 images that includes a legacy print box and the digital files of what you chose. There are options to buy a la carte as well. You can also add wall art to legacy print box, if you so choose. My post on the reveal box shows what those heirloom pieces look like.
Now Is the Right Month to Do This
As I write this it’s October. The year is closing. The holiday cards are coming, the new year website refresh is coming, and someone in your family is going to ask for a photo of you.
A combo session this fall answers every one of those requests at once: branding images for the new year, portraits for the people who keep asking, and a private gallery that stays yours alone.
You Leave With Proof of Every Version of You
There is a shift I see when a woman scrolls through her combo gallery. She stops looking for flaws. She starts recognizing herself. The executive and the mother and the woman in the silk robe share the same screen, and each one makes the others more believable.
That stays with her. She posts the new headshot without apologizing for it. She hangs the portrait in the hallway. She keeps the boudoir images and looks at them on the hard days. The photographs become an outside witness she can return to whenever her own account of herself goes quiet.
That is the real deliverable. The images are the evidence.
Book Your Nashville Combo Photoshoot
If you have been holding three versions of yourself and only photographing one, let's change that. Book your free consultation and we will talk through what you want these images to do for you, which looks to bring, and which date works best.
For a closer look at how past clients have used theirs, read more about our most popular session, the combo portrait experience, then reserve your session date when you are ready.
All of you belongs in the frame.