I’m a Jersey girl transplant with a little extra sass, thanks to my Cuban roots.  I came to Florida in the summer of 2016, purposefully severing my ties with all the people and things that were no longer serving me, and completely oblivious to what it really meant to “start fresh”.  Apparently it meant total confusion and isolation, at first.  It meant coming to terms with letting go; then slowly, gloriously opening myself to accept the gift of a blank slate.  Here’s the spoiler alert of what it really meant to start fresh:  Waiting at the other side of my fear and uncertainty was the beauty of clarity and my purpose.

And now, back to the beginning:

My first love has always been storytelling, which I explored regularly as a child by inventing my own storylines for my children’s books before I could read.  This evolved into a love of drawing my own illustrations to go with those stories. 

Photography was a natural extension of this passion as I sought different ways to capture smaller yet more powerful narratives told in people’s expressions.  Photographing people fascinated me, and while I tried my hand at landscape and nature photography, nothing compared to the rush of emotion I got from capturing a person’s story in their eyes; in the way that they chose to smile (or not) for me.  There is nothing quite as rewarding as sharing and capturing an intimate moment in time with another person, and a photograph is a way to revisit that moment and experience the rush of emotion all over again.  

Boudoir portraiture in particular is the honor of being let into a woman’s most vulnerable space and experiencing the privilege of creating art with her.

If I haven’t painted a clear enough picture for you just yet, let me leave you with a few closing facts that might:

I’m a shameless lover of all things fantastical, I became a cat lady without fully understanding how, and I can always be counted on to spearhead an impromptu dance party.

You know now that my love of women’s portraits runs deep and always has; it is evident in my photography throughout the past 8 or so years (and even long before, when my creative specialty was graphite drawing).  But there was a distinct moment when I knew for a fact that the genre of fine art boudoir was the one I was called to specialize in.

Sometime in 2017, I was asked to be onset as an assistant and stylist for a boudoir session.

I don’t remember much from the day of the session, except for that I knew intuitively how I wanted to pose our client, speaking confidently to her and directing her gently from head to toe.  I also remember vividly that every time I heard the shutter click, I was desperately dying inside to be the one pushing the button.  My body was electric with the rush of creating portraits that felt like the art I had been dreaming of making.

With that feeling came the certainty that I had found my place.

Then the labor of love that is Chanel Fernandez Photography began.  In February of 2018 I hosted my very first boudoir event to kick-start my business. I’m entering my sixth year specializing solely in fine art boudoir portraits.