Boudoir Photography is staying hot and getting hotter. Any trip to the mall will tell you that lingerie fashion is mainstream, with giant posters of women in lingerie outside of stores for all passers-by to see. Lingerie fashion shows are on prime time TV to the soundtrack of popular music. And more and more photographers are offering Boudoir as part of what their studio shoots. And more and more areas of boudoir photography are becoming their own specialty.

Pin-Up photography is probably the fastest growing area. Pin-Up is based on a photographic styles of the 1940s, modernized with the use of Photoshop backgrounds. Wikipedia has a good description of Pin-Up girls that talks about the term first being used in the 1940s. In modern photography, Pin-Up sessions revolve around 1940's style poses, cute clothes, and props and are considered less racy (and show less skin) than traditional boudoir, making them a good entry point for many customers. Pin-Up will continue to grow in 2012, since it allows clients to be playful and flirtatous in their posing while still remaining modest enough to show to friends, and can be shown off on Facebook and other social networking websites without worries.

Traditional boudoir -- which is often defined as using lighting and poses that imitiate Old Hollywood with a slightly voyeuristic camera point of view -- will continue to be popular. Not only do clients like how the dramatic lighting hides extra weight and other body flaws, the clean style of post-shooting processing appeals to a lot of photographers and their clients. It's important to note, however, that as the population ages this style of boudoir may decrease in popularity -- dramatic lighting tends to emphasize wrinkles and black and white conversions often emphasize skin issues. Photographers and clients alike will need to pay more attention to skin smoothing and other retouching with traditional boudoir images, and that may add to the cost of these types of sessions.

Glamour-influenced boudoir takes much of its lighting style and poses from the world of Glamour photography, and combines the forwardness of images seen in men's magazines with the sets and styling of boudoir to create images that are both timeless and current. This style of imagery will also grow in popularity as people who have grown up with the internet get to an age where they want boudoir photos for themselves or their loved one. The brighter lighting style and heavy emphasis on skin retouching that is native to Glamour photography will make this area of Boudoir very popular with the aging population, but photographers will need to adjust traditional Glamour poses for that same population -- poses that look good on 20-something models in mens magazines do not necessarily look flattering on the 50+ crowd.

Boudoir photography in 2012 is looking to be a still growing -- and still changing -- area of photography. Photographers will need to adapt styles to match the age and expectations of their clients, while still creating images that are intimate, sensual, and beautiful.