Empowered and at Peace | New York Boudoir : Rebecca

This breathtaking session took place last year, in October 2021. I know, I know. I can’t believe I haven’t posted it yet either!

As the first cold breezes flew through New York, my makeup artist and I arrived at our gorgeous Airbnb to begin the first of many boudoir sessions.

In my client’s words, “I’ve been speaking with Rebecca for years now trying to work with her. Splitting time between Israel and the US, conflicting schedules, and of course, Covid, we were finally able to make it work. This was years in the making!”

When my client, also Rebecca, walked into the Airbnb for her boudoir session, she lit up the room. After all this time, I could not wait to photograph her.

Through the pre-session process, I had the chance to get to know Rebecca more and help guide her through the physical and emotional preparations. I remember her telling me about her journey, sharing her feelings about her body, and giving me all the details of her stunning tattoos. Her coaching call gave us the opportunity to have a collaborative vision for her experience and the art we wanted to create together.

Afterward, she said, “This was the most intimate and personal set I have ever done in my life. Rebecca made everything so personal and important in all the best, happy, and healing ways. She makes you look within and asks the questions you are afraid to answer. I felt so much lighter and empowered after talking with her and spending time with her makeup artist, Rhonda.

Film photography has always been my favorite and most personal because of my late Aunt, so I’m not surprised that seeing the developed rolls, I feel at peace. I loved every second of this experience.

I feel at peace. I hope everyone can find that.”

The session really flowed so beautifully and naturally, and I see how that energy came through in the portraits…

I love traveling to new places and having different backdrops for the sessions. Even through the window, you know I’m not in Israel anymore!

Her eyes and the connection shots just totally blow me away.

When Rebecca saw this picture for the first time, she said, “This is the one photo I would want to represent me for the rest of my life. My jaw is on the floor. I can’t believe it.”

I’m so grateful for the opportunity to have photographed you, Rebecca. Thank you for trusting me with these intimate and vulnerable moments on your journey.

For those of you who are in the U.S. and want to have this unique experience, there are still some openings left for the first week of May 2023 in New York. Feel free to e-mail me at rebecca@rebeccasigala.com to explore the possibilities together. xoxo

Follow my incredible client, Rebecca, on her Instagram page. @embersofbecca

Makeup and Hair by Rhonda Lev

When Women Rise Together | Dressed by Danielle : Tel Aviv Boudoir

I first came across Danielle Williams, founder of Dressed by Danielle, while I was scrolling through Instagram one day. A woman, in Israel, running her own business, empowering women, and promoting body positivity?!

It gave me so much joy to see her posts about embracing her own body and how she was helping other women do the same through her gorgeous pre-loved clothing. I immediately reached out and made an appointment for my 10-year-old daughter and I to have a personal shopping session with her. Hitting her pre-teen years, my daughter has surpassed my own height and shoe size, and I wanted to give her an empowering experience where she could find clothing that she loved. The fact that Danielle offered a body-positive environment made all the difference, and over a year later, my daughter still talks about how incredible that day was.

As Danielle and I got chatting, we realized how aligned our values were. We realized that although I am a boudoir photographer and she is a personal stylist, what we do for women is actually very similar. We are both blessed to be able to witness women when they are their most vulnerable and authentic selves and help them actualize the power that is already inside of them. Her with clothing. Me with photography.

And part of that vulnerability is women coming face to face with their bodies exactly the way they are.

We spoke about how we are on our personal body love journeys alongside our clients and that our businesses really helped us grow into the women we are today. That our clients constantly inspire us, and that self-love is an ever-evolving journey. You don’t just wake up one day and love everything about yourself, it’s something that you have to compassionately work on.

And so the idea for a creative collaboration was born in hopes of creating another safe space for personal and collective healing.

Danielle posted after the session, “As we were shooting, I asked Rebecca to get some close-ups of my tummy rolls and stretch marks. If you had told 2020 Danielle that 2021 Danielle did such a thing, she would be shocked. I’ve spent many years of my life hating my body and even editing my photos to hide all the things I considered to be imperfections. But I’ve come to realize this year that you can’t hate yourself into a version of yourself that you love.”

This image inspired us to collaborate further with artist and calligrapher, Malka Klein, who brought these words to life…

Danielle wrote this beautiful letter to her body to go along with the image above,

”Dear Body,

I love you. ⁣

I love your stretch marks because they remind me of the time when we shed a massive amount of physical and emotional weight. ⁣

I love your cellulite because it reminds me how voluptuous and sexy we are.

I love your hairy skin because it reminds me how we’ve begun to embrace all that we are, as we are.

I love your flabby stomach because it reminds me that someday we will literally create humans inside of us, and that’s freaking magical.

I love everything about you, because you are me. You are the one and only vessel through which I will get to exist and experience life, and for that, I will always be grateful to you.
⁣
I am sorry for all the negative things I have said about you.⁣
⁣
I love you. ⁣”

Being part of this collaboration and witnessing Danielle in her power, just like we do for our own clients, was an incredible honor.

Special thanks to Rhonda Lev for the beautiful hair and makeup, and my husband and business partner, Yehoshua, for making sure all the working parts of this project came together as they did.

In collaboration with Dressed by Danielle

Hair and Makeup by Beauty by Rhonda

Calligraphy by Malka Klein

Kodak Film // Processed and scanned by Panda Labs

In the Name of Love | Bridal Boudoir : Sylvia

I remember taking an online photography course years back, and a piece of advice that has always stuck out in my mind was, “Your ideal client is someone who you’d want to be friends with.” While every session is special, and I actually do find connection with all of my clients, meeting and photographing Sylvia seemed serendipitous.

Sylvia initially contacted Sigala Photography, our wedding and portrait photography business, run by my husband, Yehoshua, and I, about photographing her wedding. We immediately fell in love with her and her fiance, Paul. Not long after, Sylvia and I began talking about her bridal boudoir session. At first she went back and forth, with the time and expenses dedicated to wedding planning, she wasn’t sure she could make it happen. As we spoke more, it was clear how much doing a boudoir session meant to her, and since Paul was usually the one designing elaborate surprises, this was going to be a surprise for him!

After the session happened and the afterglow of her beautiful wedding died down, I was able to ask Sylvia a little bit about her boudoir experience, and believe me, you’re going to want to read this…

Why did you decide to do a boudoir session, and what were you hoping to get out of it?

The original "trigger" that made me want to do a boudoir session, was wanting to do something special for my fiance as a gift on the night before our wedding.  Paul is the first man I was ever with that truly respected and admired my body, and persisted every single day of our relationship to make me love my body too.  As myself and many other women know, this is not a guarantee when it comes to significant others! Past boyfriends would tell me they preferred if I straightened my hair, or would ask me to put more make up on before going out.  I was also in one very abusive relationship when I was younger that basically destroyed my self-esteem.  When I met Paul, I couldn't even believe him at first when he would encourage me to leave my hair natural or beg me to not put any make up on.  "You are so beautiful the way you are, and you never need to change a thing" he would say…

Slowly, over our almost 4 years together, Paul has helped me rebuild my confidence and regain my sense of independence and strength.  So, in celebration of getting married to my best friend, I wanted to do something that would show him and thank him for bringing me to a point where I felt confident and sexy doing a boudoir shoot.  Doing this session was proof to myself that I was where I wanted to be in regards to my mental perspective, that I loved my body.  Having Rebecca do this shoot for me was a little treat for my soul, and a little treat for the one who helped me learn to love myself again.

Were you nervous leading up to the session?

A little bit. But after speaking with some of Rebecca's previous clients, everyone said they also felt a bit of nerves beforehand, but that the second I would start, I would love it.  This couldn't have been more true! 

How did your session go?

On a scale of 1 to 10, my session was a million billion trillion.  I loved spreading out on my bed, or leaning against a wall in my hallway and just feeling naturally sexy.  My thoughts throughout the session went back and forth from excitement about myself, and excitement for Paul to eventually see the results! I can't believe I kept it a complete surprise for him.  On the night before the wedding, (we weren't seeing each other for a few days) my maid of honor called him with directions on where to find the album in our apartment.  We decided not to speak until the wedding, but he couldn't help himself. He texted me and said it was the best gift ever! He loved the photos and said they were beautiful and sexy.

Did you get anything out of the session that you didn't expect?

This is a bit strange, but I actually had a very special moment with my mother after I received the photos and showed them to her.  She smiled and said she was proud of me.  She was happy to see her daughter love and respect her body, and she was happy for me that I was marrying someone who loved and respected my body too.  Definitely wasn't expecting that reaction from her, but it really meant the world to me.

Did your boudoir session have an effect on your perspective or body image?

Yes, an incredibly positive effect.  And the effect grows stronger each and every time I look back on the photos and remind myself to love and appreciate my body and all the little marks and curves.

Would you recommend this experience to other women? If yes, who would you specifically recommend it to and why?

My mother! I'm hoping to gift her a session for her 65th birthday.  My mother is one of the most hardworking and independent women I know, plus she is the best example when it comes to loving your body.  In her 60's my mom isn't worrying about chasing her wrinkles or fighting the aging process, instead, she became a half marathon runner.  She wakes up every morning before work to run, stands on her feet each day for a 12 hour work day, and cooks all her food herself and eats extremely healthy.  She never touches her hair or puts on make up and has always encouraged me to follow her example of loving my own natural beauty. I think she deserves a few hours of pampering and special photos to hold on to! 

Photographing this absolutely gorgeous, loving and sweet woman right before one of the most meaningful milestones in her life was an honor. Her reasons for embarking on this boudoir journey was a personal one, and yet, her story is a celebration of all womanhood. Being in a place of self-compassion and truly knowing that we are worthwhile enough to be in healthy and fulfilling relationships is everything.

Makeup and Hair by Jaquelyn Mowszowski Lawrence

Brushes with Cancer TLV | Alona

When I was paired with Alona Metz for Brushes with Cancer in Tel Aviv, I didn’t yet know the impact of the journey we were about to embark upon. Over our six months together, there were beautiful moments with laughter and tears, hurdles that we had to overcome and significant transformations that changed both of our lives for the better.

It was October of last year, which is breast cancer awareness month. A big part of my work is about celebrating women and their relationship with their bodies. I wanted to take the opportunity to pay tribute to women who were touched with breast cancer and share their stories through my photography.

Someone tagged ‘Alona Metz’ in a Facebook post, and I soon learned that just the day before, she had opened Thrivacious, a non-profit organization, supporting English speaking women in Israel who were touched with breast cancer. We spoke on the phone, and my heart soared hearing briefly about her story and her goals for empowering other women. Then she told me about Brushes with Cancer, a program that she was the chairing, and I wanted IN.

Brushes with Cancer is a six month program that creates unexpected intersections between artists and individuals touched with cancer. The pairs connect and form a relationship with the intention of creating a unique piece of artwork. The program culminates with a celebratory art exhibition, gala and silent auction with the proceeds benefiting Twist Out Cancer.

I was surprised yet totally and completely honored when, a week later, I was paired with Alona herself.

In Alona’s words, “My mentor and head of the program, Jenna Benn Shersher, said you need to be paired with Rebecca. She knew a lot about my story and saw this as an opportunity for me to work with someone who could help me reconnect to a body part that I felt I had lost.”

Alona was 28 years old, working as a lawyer in California when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. “It was very shocking, and the next year of my life was kind of a blur. I went through fertility treatments and chemotherapy. I lost all of my hair. I had to have a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery…”

Going through so many emotional and physical changes during cancer often takes a toll on a person’s self-esteem and body image. “It’s been 5 years, but one physical scar I still maintain to this day are the scars on my breasts from when they were reconstructed. While objectively people might think they look good in certain ways, I couldn’t even look in the mirror. I couldn’t connect to that part of myself anymore, and I didn’t want to. It was more than just the way it looked. It was a daily reminder to me of my brush with death. 

My way of coping with the trauma was to ignore and distance myself from it. That played a huge role when it came to my dating life, my sexuality and the relationship I have with my own body.”

I had photographed women touched with breast cancer in the past, and I learned so much about cancer and body image and all the fears surrounding that. Yet with those sessions, the objective was very clear. They hired me as their boudoir photographer, and I let them take the lead in terms of what they wanted out of the session. With Alona, there were a lot of different factors and there were times when I wasn’t sure what I was doing. Was this boudoir session for Alona? Was it for me? Was it for Brushes with Cancer? Was it for the person who would be buying the final piece? Was it a message to the world?

It was important to me to create a piece that was aesthetically pleasing yet honest about the struggle of reclaiming her body and sexuality after breast cancer. In general, that is where I find the most beauty, in sharing stories, even the hard ones, in an authentic way. I wanted Alona to love it, I wanted to love it, I wanted the world to see and understand it, and that was a whole bunch of pressure.

Even before it all began, we decided that we would do two sessions so that we could have a variety of photographs to choose from, and I thought that I would possibly use a combination of images to tell Alona’s story.

The first session was fun and sexy and took place in Alona’s Tel Aviv apartment. Makeup artist, Jaquelyn Mowszowski Lawrence, generously donated her time and talent. Alona said she felt like a princess. We both agreed it went really well, and we had a great time together.

It was only afterwards when all the emotions started coming out.

“Shit got real when Rebecca showed me the photos for the first time. I was like ‘OMG’ these are the photos that other people are going to see.

She sent me a montage of 5 or 6 photos, and objectively they are gorgeous, but all I was thinking was, are people going to notice the scars? Are they going to think I look normal? Will they think I look like a freak?

I was so focused on that that I started to panic. I don’t even think I saw the big picture.“

I remember Alona asked me why I felt that these photographs represented her journey, and being so excited about the images, it really hurt to hear that, and I was frustrated that I had put so much time and energy into the session, now knowing that I probably wouldn’t be using them for the final piece.

Putting the feelings and photographs from the first session aside, at least momentarily, we set up the second session, and we decided to do it in the forest.

When Alona was sick, she would go on nature walks and used nature to help her cope and heal. It seemed fitting that we would use the beauty of nature and incorporate it in the final images.

Alona said, “In the second shoot, we tried something different. We had a conversation during the shoot, and I re-told parts of my story to Rebecca.

It was a much more emotional shoot because we were actually talking about cancer and how it affected my life. But it was also really fun. I think the bond we had that day was very strong. Everything from laughing and crying together to getting bugs in our hair!

I didn’t realize how intense photography is, but Rebecca is willing to do whatever it takes to get the shot including getting covered in bugs!

Even after we left, I felt that I had meditated or something like that. Being outside in nature and being with Rebecca was a really magical experience”

I felt the same way as Alona. Looking back on that day, I feel a sense of spirituality. We were so connected to each other, ourselves and the world around us.

When I received the scans back from that magical day, I went through the photos one by one, and I stopped in my tracks when I saw this image. THE image. It was everything.

Alona had a bit of a different experience, but she says it was incredibly significant,

“When Rebecca showed me the photograph she wanted to use, I freaked out.

Firstly, it went from her wanting to use a series of photos to just this one photo. And my face wasn’t even in it, it was just my chest but covered with this beautiful almond branch. You could see my scar. I felt like it was a very artistic photograph, but again, to me, I looked like a freak. Like I was deformed or something was wrong with me.”

I tried so hard to be understanding and hold Alona’s feelings within the context of this experience, but at that point, I just couldn’t. She didn’t know it at the time, but I broke down and cried. For a long time. I was angry and frustrated, but I was also overwhelmed with self-doubt and questioned my ability to create a piece that I would be proud of for the silent auction. Once I calmed down, we spoke briefly on the phone and she explained more of her feelings, and I really did understand her.

“I just wanted there to be more to the story than, what for me, was so painful. I wanted there to be some positivity. Now I can see the positivity in that picture, but I couldn’t then.”

Alona willingly gave me permission to use the photograph for the project, as long as I chose a couple more to showcase. In the end, there were three. I thought it was brave of Alona to allow me to use a picture that was actually very painful for her to look at, at that time.

“Seeing it at the event, I saw it in a completely different way. Not only was that me, but I was proud that it was me. People were looking at it and giving amazing feedback about it.

I think it’s probably my favorite photograph now.”

THE image ended up selling (at one of the highest price points!) to a woman who was at the gala and was a breast cancer survivor as well. She said it reminded her of something in her own experience. “I think this photograph was bigger than me. It’s really amazing that Rebecca’s photo and the inspiration that came from my story, and my body, could inspire other people that didn’t actually know us.

I went through a transitional cycle of not being able to let go and be fully accepting of myself, and it’s funny because Rebecca saw me at every stage of this journey. To calling her the night before the first session and freaking out to being upset about the picture; to today when I saw all of the pictures together in a gallery. My reaction to the photos today is very different than it was 6 months ago. The journey we went through really helped me.

From this experience, I started to take this part of myself more seriously, and I can honestly say I feel better today. I feel better about the way that I look. I can connect with myself on a much more comfortable level. I can breathe again."

"Rebecca was an integral part of this journey and without her and this experience, I might not be able to look at those photos today and love them as I do. My hope is that other women have the opportunity to work with someone like Rebecca because it can open you up in a really positive way.”

Being part of this journey with Alona was an insanely beautiful blessing and gift. I think we pushed each other in ways that were uncomfortable at times, but necessary, and through it all I became a changed photographer and a changed person. I opened my boudoir business 5 years ago and had so many meaningful experiences, but this particular one gave me the ability to see how I can photograph women on an even deeper level. Alona has inspired all of my boudoir sessions that followed over the past year, and the inspiration keeps flowing. I’m grateful to have stepped into an entirely new world, with the ability to take the things I’ve learned with me and continue to help women connect with their bodies and gravitate towards self-love and acceptance.