We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jenna Hoekstra. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jenna below.

Hi Jenna, thanks for joining us today. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?

Women deserve to feel beautiful and loved in their own skin.

The age of flawless beauty and perfect body image was rampant when I was a teenager. Everything in the media told us that we needed to be this or that to achieve “beautiful”. It gave girls my age a very skewed view of what we were “supposed” to look like and created unrealistic ideals to strive for when it came to beauty and body image. It was always about living up to what someone else said was perfect, what someone else said was the goal.

Fast forward about 20 years and I think the world has finally realized that women should embrace their authentic selves and strive to feel GOOD about who they are rather than trying to fit a pre-determined beauty ideal. Beauty is subjective, unique and doesn’t have to fit inside any one box. And while we are making vast leaps toward that becoming the new norm, it is so very VERY hard to unlearn something you were taught throughout your entire formative years.

My goal as a boudoir photographer is to make women feel liberated from that ideal that society has told them in the past that they should strive for. Instead of meeting this agonizingly difficult status of perfection physically, let’s start to see that HAPPY is the new pretty. CONFIDENT is the new flawless. I try to capture that for my clients. I want to share with them the beauty that can be found inside them and remind them, through the WHOLE experience of the boudoir shoot, that they deserve happiness and to feel good about themselves and in their own skin, instead of comparing themselves to others.

Women forget to prioritize themselves in their day-to-day lives. Women are caretakers in so many ways, and by doing a shoot and going through this whole experience, they are reminded to take care of themselves and their mental/emotional needs just as much as they do with their loved ones.

I want my legacy to be that I was able to help women build their confidence in themselves; help them to remember that they are important too, and that the old beauty standards are meant to be shaken up. If you find ways to be happy, REAL beauty kind of just comes on its own.

Jenna, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

When I was younger, I was always doing something with a camera. I had TONS of rolls of film to be developed, of just about everything (landscapes, my little sister posing in her swimsuit, stuffed animal still-lifes), and as I got older, I realized how much I really enjoyed that medium of expression. I went to a very small school district with not a ton of opportunities in photography, so I joined yearbook and realized how much I enjoyed photographing people above pretty much everything else.

Choosing to further my education after high school, I went to Grand Valley State University in the Grand Rapids area and studied Photography/Communications. It was more art-focused, but I really found my niche when I was able to start photographing weddings and portraiture. I had a LONG way to go, but I definitely knew it was where my heart was at when it came to my career. Seeing people at their happiest and capturing these important moments really was definitely something I wanted to be able to do.

Boudoir came later on into my time as a photographer and I embraced it when it did. I was always shy and maybe even a little prudish when I was younger so it felt like a way to open up and try something a little different for me. The human form has always been something I’ve been amazed with and it made sense that I would be drawn to this form of photography.

I actually had a boudoir shoot done of myself by another photographer before I started photographing boudoir myself. I thought it would be a good way to get into a client’s head, feel how they would feel. It’s uncomfortable to be vulnerable like that in front of someone you don’t know very well, and by learning how that feels, it really helped me to tailor the experience I wanted to create for my clients into being as comfortable, enjoyable and liberating as possible.

I’ve been doing boudoir photography for over 10 years, but I’ve been focusing on boudoir as more of an experience for the last six or so and I love seeing how women’s eyes really light up when they see their images and say “Is that me?!?”. Yes, girl, it IS! Making these women feel great about themselves is absolutely amazing.

I still do some portraiture and I still love weddings but boudoir is a whole other level when it comes to making people happy and really feel good about themselves.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

Word of mouth was always one of my biggest connections with clients, but as you grow that gets a bit harder to rely on. I have been working on growing my email list and online following (web presence, social media, etc) in the last few years and I’m working on sharing relevant and useful content with my followers.

One of my biggest goals is to grow my online VIP group, which I have through Facebook. It’s a great way to connect with other like-minded women and I have a lot of people who like to share stories and help one another out. Right now it’s not huge and want more than anything to keep growing and making it more helpful and accessible to women who would love to have a comfortable community to be a part of, even if it’s mostly online.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

Since I graduated from college, I’ve always been involved in photography. I’ve actually had my “day job” for over 17 years, which I do alongside my photography business. I would definitely say that the portrait, wedding and more recently boudoir photography part of my life started as a side-hustle, though it grew from just a few small clients and weddings into a much more self-sustaining business over the years. Even though I still maintain the other job (at least for now!), my personal business definitely takes precedence over my life. It’s so much more gratifying to be able to do something you love as your career.

As your expertise grows, so does your ability to serve your clients in better ways. Nothing has been more helpful to me than that experience I’ve gained.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.silhouetteboudoir.jennarosephotography.com
• Instagram: @silhouetteboudoir
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/silhouetteboudoirbyjennarose
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenna-hoekstra-61824922/
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@silhouetteboudoir
• Wedding website www.jennarosephotography.com (that’s the other half of my business with weddings and portraiture)

Image Credits
Oliviara Multimedia (Deb Oliviara)