I haven’t been shooting much the last few weeks, so I figured I’d work on my search engine optimization and things that might help people like you find my page.

I fired up my Google Search Console and started playing around with it. You can post images and things there so when people search for your business, there are preview images, a map of where your business is located (or for me, a map of the area I shoot in), you can add blog posts.

You can even create a website. Which I did.

I added in an image as a header. The very one above, in fact.

And it was rejected. For what? For being … too salacious? For someone showing less skin that you’d see on a beach on a summer’s day? I bet it’s the strap off the shoulder. Is it the strap off the shoulder?

I mean, there’s always the chance that I did something wrong, but I keep tossing images at the site and they keep getting rejected. This is what it looks like now:

Like the photo? Thanks. I didn’t take it. That’s just some stock photo they dropped in because they don’t like mine.

And this makes me annoyed. It’s not like I’m trying to post an image from an EX-Rated shoot. All the bits that are “supposed to be covered” are covered. But they are—apparently—too provocative for Google.

Which just shows you how far we’ve come, which is not far enough. That we can only look at the female form through the male gaze; that this might somehow be sexualized, and therefore is not appropriate. That a woman can’t be presented as being proud of her own self, of loving the skin she’s in. Of having agency over her own sexuality and her own body and how she choses to be represented.

I mean, I understand. I grew up watching how women were sexualized. I know how easy it is to do. But at the same time, it isn’t that hard to search for some really, really, really disturbing content on Google and have it served up. My images are pretty tame, in the grand scheme of things.

This just goes to show, though, that the standard ways businesses promote themselves these days (Google, Facebook) are not really going to work for me.

Instead, I am putting a lot of my effort into finding ways to get people talking about me. One of those ways is a client referral discount.

If you book a shoot with me, and are blown away by your images, and tell a friend, and they book a shoot with me, You’ll get $200 in credit towards either more images, or towards your next shoot. And no, this is not a sliding scale. If you tell ten friends about how amazing my work is, and those ten friends book, you’ll get $2000 towards your next session. Because I’d rather reward people for promoting my business than to give Mark Z or Larry P any more money. They don’t need it.

And if you are a local business or know a local business that would be a perfect pairing for a beyond boudoir photographer, contact me, or have them contact me. Some ideas include: Local gyms, aestheticians, lingerie shops, bridal shops, fitness instructors, yoga instructors… any place where people congregate who might be interested in uplifting, empowering imagery.