Connect
To Top

Meet Candace Perry of Beautiful You Studios in Highland Park

Today we’d like to introduce you to Candace Perry.

Candace, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Back in 2010, I was a graphic designer/marketer dealing with being in & out of work due to the Recession. On a whim, I thought I might have an eye for photography & be able to make an income on that, so I purchased a half-broken DSLR off Craigslist. That very same year I shot a photo of my two younger brothers, both Marines, marching up a hill together which helped me win a professional-level camera from a national photography contest.

By 2011, I had gotten into fashion photography, and wanting to have the same experience my models got, decided to set up a shoot for myself. I booked the makeup artists & hair stylists I’d worked with set up a backdrop & lights in one of their living rooms, & asked a friend who was also an aspiring fashion photographer to click the button. When I saw the pictures I got back, my life was forever changed. I was nearly 30 and my self-esteem went from feeling ugly (I was bullied about my looks as a child & wasn’t asked out on a date until I was 26), to feeling beautiful for the first time in my life, literally overnight.

Having a professional, Hollywood-level artistry team who knows how to work with your natural beauty & to celebrate it rather than cover it makes a WORLD of difference. I’d done Glamour Shots when I was 16, but looking back at those photos had made me feel more insecure. Their team didn’t know how to work with Black hair & made it extra poofy, and their makeup artist covered all my freckles with a thick foundation.

I realized that providing this same type of experience for other women was what my legacy should be & FashionShots was born. Eventually, I grew tired of photographing models who just traded for time & discovered that paying clients weren’t booking, they thought it was only for models, so we re-branded to Beautiful You Studios around 2015 I think. It’s really hard to say. All I know is that we were the first ones on the planet, but other companies copied the name later on.

Fast forward a few years & I was still just doing photography on the side while doing marketing in corporate America. Wanting a change of scenery from Savannah, Georgia, I moved to Dallas, Texas, in 2016 and took a job as an associate photographer at a local boudoir studio. Unfortunately, that studio had many financial issues & I was let go after only a month so I took a year off from photography & returned to the marketing world.

In 2017, I began shooting seniors, glamour, branding, & boudoir on the side, and in 2019 I decided to niche down & specialize in boudoir photography. I think it was my choice to specialize that finally helped me grow my business into a full-time income source and I left corporate America for good on September 20th, 2019!

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Beautiful You Studios story. Tell us more about the business.
Besides the Hollywood-quality experience we provide at our luxury studio located in Highland Park, I think what sets me apart from other boudoir photographers in the area is that I’m not only an award-winning & internationally-published photographer (most notably, I was voted into the Top 10% of Shoot & Share’s worldwide photography contest by 6 million voters in 2019 & my work has been in 20+ fashion magazines), I also have a background in modeling & used to teach at a modeling school. These skills give me a unique perspective when it comes to providing detailed instructions on how to pose. I show my clients exactly what to do with every inch of their body & even how to get sexy facial expressions. This is how I can take literally any woman of any age, size, or color who walks into my studio & turn her into a model – yes, ANY woman!! I love showing smaller women that they can have curves too & plus-sized women that they can look just as beautiful as anyone they’ve ever envied in a magazine. Watching women gain confidence in their own skin right before my eyes & having them come back a whole 2 years later to thank me for changing their lives, is such an empowering experience for us BOTH. I truly love what I do & it feels really great knowing that what I’m doing is making a difference – this is why I chose to specialize in boudoir!

Being on both sides of the camera has also helped me learn what NOT to do. I’ve been photographed a lot and what I’ve noticed is that most photographers are really awkward & just stand there silently clicking the button, not saying a word while you’re just kinda floundering around hoping you look sexy. They mostly just tell you “go stand/sit/lay over there” but don’t show you how to pose, what to do with your face, or the back of the camera throughout the entire shoot, I think because they’re worried you won’t like their work without Photoshop. Out of the hundreds of photographers I’ve been photographed by, less than a handful did any of those things, and only a couple have done all three. What most photographers don’t realize is that not doing all three things leads to a lot of anxiety for the subject. Most photographers however, either don’t care or don’t know because they haven’t been photographed before. Either way, it’s a disservice to the client to just wildly shoot hundreds of photographs hoping for a magical unicorn shot. We have the power to make or break a woman’s confidence, much like those Glamour Shots artists broke mine in my youth, and people aren’t paying for 1 or 2 great photos. They’re paying to feel more beautiful than they ever have before.

There’s simply nothing more fulfilling for me than watching my clients’ eyes light up & tears of joy stream down their face as they realize they’re beautiful for the first time. It also never gets old hearing a client say she’s never liked a photo anyone else has taken of her in her entire life – not even her wedding photos – but loves every single photo I shot of her, all just because I took the time to do the work it takes to make sure my clients are comfortable throughout the entire session by showing them exactly what to do. 🙂

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Luck plays a small factor – I feel like if I’d been lucky enough to not go through the Recession, I would’ve found success earlier because it takes a lot of money to build a business. However, everything happens for a reason. I’m sure that one day I’ll understand the reason for going through those hard times! 🙂

Pricing:

  • Sessions start at $350 which includes hair, makeup, & the session itself. Collections that include digital images, wall art, albums, & more are additional. Visit our website to set up your free phone consultation today!

Contact Info:

Suggest a story: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More in