Keeping Your Privates Private: Boston Boudoir Photography

A boudoir session is a chance to show off a different side of yourself (the romantic, the sensual, the sexy, the sassy and maybe even the naughty) and celebrate you either for yourself or someone special. However amazing you look and feel about your Boston boudoir photography session, it's not something you'll want to share with everyone.

Last week, the Internet exploded with the news of a giant trove of stolen celebrity photos that ranged from risque to raunchy. Hackers used a number of available tools and exploits to pull photos from what women once thought were private places.

So how can you make sure your private photos stay private?

The long answer is that it's difficult to keep a determined jerk out of your business on the Internet (which really says a lot about jerks), but there are a few easy steps you can take to make it tougher to get to your stuff.

1. Don't Rely on the Cloud: Cloud storage solutions like Dropbox and iCloud are incredibly easy to use and great for sharing photos between your devices and the people you care about. Unfortunately some of the things that make it so easy to share from your cloud account can make it easy to hack.

Store any private pictures you want to hold onto locally (and make sure they're not being backed up to the cloud either). With your boudoir session you can also get a great album or portfolio to turn your pictures into something really special.

2. Check Your Passwords: If you're going to use an online storage solution, make sure you have a strong password. There are plenty of great password management tools that will let you keep track of 16 character alphanumeric strings, but because exploits are often about brute force (just having robots input strings of digits until something clicks) you can also use another technique: http://xkcd.com/936/

Another security tip is to make sure you're using different passwords for every website.

3. Lie About Security Questions: Often you can reset account passwords by answering a few security questions. With a little bit of information about you a dedicated hacker can make guesses about your answers but if you tell the computer that your mother's maiden name was "Luther Vandross" it's going to be much harder to guess.

So what is Ryan Richardson Photography doing to keep your boudoir sessions private?

We're always working to improve our guest's experience with us, our goal is to make sure you feel amazing from the moment you walk into your session and every time you leaf through your album.

To make it more convenient for our clients, we offer online proofing (rather than dragging you out for a session and then back to order your prints). Galleries are password protected and aren't exposed to search engines or even our own proofing site. Additionally, the galleries are only available for a limited time so you can order your prints. Clients that are concerned about their privacy can set up an in-person sales consultation.

Secondly, we use trusted print partners that work with boudoir and professional photographers throughout the country and have a good track record of keeping client information secure. As we build on our boudoir business we're looking to bring more of our printing in house.

We want our clients to approach us with absolute confidence that their images will be treated with respect and discretion (which is partly why we're not so pushy about boudoir as we are weddings).