Boudoir Photography & Your Privacy - 4/26/16

I did my first Boudoir Day in 2013. Everything went great and the clients all loved their photos. Nine months later I received the following email from a person (another photographer) I didn't know:

Hi,
I am emailing you to inform you that your boudoir galleries have been hacked by internet voyeurs. 

My heart raced. At first I wondered if this must be a joke. Regardless, I took down all of my clients' galleries that were password protected with passwords they had chosen themselves and had been up for months at this point. I emailed each of them that I was taking the galleries down as a security measure, and searched Google to see if this happened to anyone else.

It sure did.

As a business owner, this is was one of my worst nightmares that had just come true. My clients' safety and privacy is my strongest values as a photographer and this could affect my integrity as a business owner. There were some clients who opted to release their images to the internet, but for these voyeurs, it was a game to try to get into the galleries of clients' who wished their images to be kept private. It was disgusting, and I hated that this happened to thousands of photographers and their clients.

The forums were eventually taken down, many photographers teamed together to shut down the perverts' operation (I believe the FBI may have even gotten involved). Thankfully, everything turned out alright and this situation brought awareness to boudoir photographers and business owners.

The internet is a big place, though. Never risk putting content online if it is meant to be private. This is exactly why I don't host boudoir galleries online anymore. The clients' privacy and my business isn't worth the convenience of hosting an online gallery. Aside from security reasons, I found I liked the in-person viewings 1000 times more than hosting a gallery...I didn't ever expect this. I made separate appointments with clients where we sat with coffee and I got to see the client react to their photos right in front of me. I saw beaming smiles, laughter at remembering how much fun they had, tears shed for how beautiful they saw themselves, and hugs shared for the experience boudoir photography gave us.

xx emily bee