#‎dudeoir‬: Male boudoir photos taken by Vancouver Island photographer take Internet by storm

A male boudoir shoot by a Duncan-based photographer is turning into a viral sensation online.

While male boudoir was attempted by many photographers before, Masika Allan of Masika May Photography says it is not something she would normally do.

She is used to taking sexy pictures of women in their lingerie, but when her long-time friend Brandon Williams asked her if she would go out on a limb for him and do something different as a surprise for his wife’s birthday, she had to say yes.

Allan photographed Williams’ engagement, wedding and his newborn baby, but this time around they had to come up with a cover-up.

Williams had to tell his wife he was going golfing, so he showed up at Allan’s studio wearing golf clothes.

“When he came here, I just did exactly what I do with all of my boudoir sessions,” Allan says. “I posed him how I would pose all the ladies. Other than hair and make-up, we basically did everything that I would do at a regular boudoir session.”

Allan admits there were times when she was laughing so hard, she had to stop and hold her breath to make sure she could focus her camera properly.

While many may think the photos are quite risqué, Allan says there were actually a lot of photos that did not make the cut, simply because they would not pass Facebook’s nudity filters.

“He just nailed it,” she says. “There were a few times where he would break down and laugh too, but then he would look so serious and I would tell him to do something and he would do it perfectly.”

Allan says she has never expected the photos to go viral.

“I expected it would get a bit of attention because he is known in our friends’ circle to do funny stuff like this,” she says. “I expected our friends to share it and all of us to get a good laugh out of it. But I had no idea it would go to the extreme that it did.”

The photos that Allan appropriately hashtagged “#‎dudeoir‬” have been shared 100,000 times in just 24 hours, getting almost seven million views on her Facebook page.

Allan says, perhaps unsurprisingly, she received tons of messages from other men wanting to book a boudoir photo session with her, but she is having her reservations.

“It is not something I will be doing,” she says. “I did it for him because he is a friend and I know him. I just don’t know how I feel about men that I don’t know coming to my home and stripping down in front of me.”

But for any men out there brave enough to give a male boudoir photo shoot a try, Allan says just be confident and have fun.

“It is all about posing,” she says.