September 2, 2026
Anna and I go back to 2023, which feels both like five minutes ago and approximately seventeen studio renovations ago.
She had joined my Facebook group, lurked for a while like many of y’all do 😂, and eventually decided to book after getting a feel for me and the work. When I asked her recently why she originally chose Lanora Ronée Photography, she said she loved my photos and style, but she also felt like I was genuine.
Her first time in front of my camera was for a Birthday Boudie model call that she, in fact, almost cancelled the night prior from nerves. I still have the conversation where she emailed me in full panic mode… see below screenshot.
Since then, she’s come back for Babes Days, photographed with me through different versions of the studio, and now she was back for another full Luxe boudoir session.
And despite the fact that this was nowhere near her first time doing this, she didn’t walk in magically immune to the same thoughts a lot of women have before a session. When I asked how she felt about herself beforehand, she said she felt okay, but still felt like there was “room for improvement,” mostly because of body-image issues. Her biggest fear was even more familiar: she was worried she simply wouldn’t like how she looked in the photos.
Spoiler: that did not go according to plan. She loved every single one.
It Had Been More Than Two Years Since We Put Her in a Bedroom
Which is honestly kind of wild considering how many times she has been in front of my camera since her first session. Her last bedroom photos were more than two years ago, and the bedroom she photographed in then isn’t even the same bedroom we have now. That set has since become Lovers Quarters, and Anna chose it for this session specifically for the bed and mirror. The room also has the St. Andrews Cross, but that wasn’t her vibe, so we skipped it.
That’s one of the reasons I ask clients what they’re actually drawn to instead of assuming that choosing a set means you want every single thing inside of it. A room is just our starting point. We can use the pieces you love, completely ignore the ones you don’t, and photograph the space in a way that makes sense for you. For Anna, that meant bringing her back into a bedroom set for the first time in years and leaning into the bed and mirror rather than trying to make the entire room fit her.
And once we started shooting, the thing she had worried about beforehand started disappearing pretty damn quickly. She told me she felt confident and sexy during her session, and one of her favorite parts was getting to see photos as we went. Those little peeks at the back of my camera kept giving her another confidence boost because she could actually see what I was seeing while we were creating it.
That matters when the thought you walked in with was, “What if I hate how I look?”
It’s one thing for me to tell you that you look amazing. It’s another thing entirely when I turn the camera around and you can see it yourself.
Some of This Session Was Completely New
One of Anna’s other choices was the new Living Room, which gave us something she simply couldn’t have done during one of her earlier sessions because it didn’t exist yet. That’s part of the fun of having clients come back while I continue changing the studio like a woman who is apparently incapable of leaving a room alone. Sometimes I add an entirely new space. Sometimes I rebuild something we already have, move furniture, change a wall, bring in new wardrobe, or get one of those ideas that begins with “Okay, hear me out…” and ends with me buying construction materials.
So even when I’m photographing someone I know really well, I’m not trying to dig through her old galleries and figure out how to recreate them. I already made those photographs. When Anna comes back, I want to make what we haven’t made yet.
And clearly she feels the same way, because when I asked whether she’d do another boudoir session after this one, the answer was an immediate yes.
And Then There’s the Teal Chaise
Okay, THIS one has history. The teal chaise was the very first piece of furniture I bought for my original studio in Colleyville.
Before the current Fort Worth Unleashed Studio looked anything like it does today, before all of the different rooms and builds and ridiculous things we’ve added over the years, there was that chaise. And Anna has already been photographed on it.
So for this session, we brought her back to the same teal chaise, except now it lives against our red floral wall and looks completely different than it did in the old studio. I love that way more than I probably should. There are photos of Anna from years ago on that same piece of furniture in a studio that no longer exists the way it did then. Now I have new photographs of her on it again, years later, with an entirely different backdrop and a whole lot of life and studio evolution in between.
I’m not going to pretend the couch is some profound metaphor for the passage of time. Sometimes a chaise is absolutely just a couch. But it’s still really fucking cool. Especially because that thing has somehow survived every move, redesign, room shuffle and moment where I looked around the studio and decided I needed to change everything again.
The Gothic Room Wasn’t Even Supposed to Be Part of the Plan
We finished the main part of Anna’s session and then I had one more thing I wanted to try. I had just gotten a brand-new white tulle robe covered in pearl detailing, and once I saw it on her I immediately wanted to photograph it in the Gothic Room. So we did a quick bonus set before wrapping up.
Our Luxe Murder Robes are a stunning bonus set choice, and this one is soft, sheer, covered in pearls and completely different from the darker feel of that room, which is exactly why I wanted them together. This is also the point where repeat clients have learned that “I think we’re done” and “we are actually done” are two entirely different things in my studio. 😂 If I see something and my brain immediately goes, “WAIT. I have an idea,” there is a very good chance we are taking at least five more pictures.
Anna has known me for three years. She knows the drill.
She Was Afraid She Wouldn’t Like the Photos
And I want to come back to that, because I think it would be really easy to look through this gallery knowing Anna has photographed with me multiple times and assume she just walks into every session completely confident now. She doesn’t.
She literally told me her biggest fear going into this shoot was that she wouldn’t like the way she looked. Afterward, I asked what went through her head when she saw the images for the first time. Her answer? “I couldn’t believe I looked that hot!!!” Which made me laugh because YES, MA’AM. 😂
But it also says a lot about the weird disconnect that can happen between the way we think we look and what happens when we get outside of our own heads for a second. She didn’t tell me she suddenly stopped having every body insecurity she has ever had. She said the session made her feel more confident even with the things she personally sees as flaws.
I actually like that answer better…. Because that’s real.
You can have parts of your body you struggle with and still love a photograph of yourself. You can have body-image issues and still feel sexy. You can be nervous about what you’re going to see and then end up wondering how the hell you’re supposed to narrow down your gallery because apparently you look hot in all of them. Those things are, in fact, allowed to exist at the same time.
Coming Back Doesn’t Mean Doing It All Over Again
I think sometimes people assume a second boudoir session would feel redundant. You already have the photos, right? But Anna is such a good example of why I don’t see it that way at all. Her first session with me was a Birthday Boudie model call in 2023. She’s done Babes Days since then. She has photos from old sets, previous versions of the studio and completely different kinds of shoots. This session doesn’t replace any of those.
It gets added to them.
Now she has Lovers Quarters after going more than two years without a bedroom set. She has the brand-new Living Room. She has a new version of an old favorite with the teal chaise and red floral wall. And because I apparently don’t know when to quit, she also has the completely unplanned pearl robe photos in the Gothic Room.
More importantly, she has another set of photographs from a point in her life when she admitted she still had some body-image struggles and then walked away telling me she felt more confident anyway.
When I asked what she would tell a woman who was considering doing this herself, Anna said there is never going to be a “right time” or a “perfect body or weight.” Her advice was basically to stop waiting for those things, trust the process and do it. And considering she started as the woman lurking in my Facebook group three years ago before finally deciding to book, I think she’s earned the right to say that. 😂
There are pieces of Lanora Ronée Photography from completely different eras in this gallery, right alongside spaces and wardrobe that were brand new when we photographed them. There’s also a woman who has done this several times and still came in wondering whether she would like the way she looked.
Then she saw the photos and couldn’t believe she looked that hot.
Three years later, I’d say the lurking worked out pretty well. And yes, the teal chaise lives to see another session.
