Navigating Insecurities in Your Portrait Session!
We all know how much we value having photos of our loved ones and family. We all know how special it is to look back on big life events, small moments, and the photos that remind us of who we were and where we were and what life looked like when that photo happened. In this blog, I want to give space to something that everyone I’ve worked with so far has navigated to some degree; loving photos of their loved ones but feeling uncomfortable being photographed. I won’t be able to offer a fix so that insecurities just disappear forever; I wish I could! But I do hope to offer some attainable tips to navigate our insecurities.
•There’s validation, and then there’s toxic positivity. I’m not here to tell you to “post the photo anyway, you look beautiful and no one is looking at your insecurities!” While well intended, encouragements like this often don’t create safety to share our discomforts and anxieties. The only person allowed to tell you to post a photo of yourself is you!
•Ask your photographer to have a conversation with you and talk to them about it. I ask every client in their consultation if they have anything they want me to avoid in photos, and anything they want me to highlight in photos! I always share that I love my eyes and I love my eyebrows when they’re filled in, and that I really avoid being photographed from my left because I’m missing my top left incisor tooth and it’s so obvious to me in photos. No one else can tell. But I can, and that’s the priority. Having a missing tooth is a huge, huge insecurity of mine and it isn’t one that I’m interested in working through. And that’s totally okay!
•Body neutrality is generally a more attainable goal; body positivity is a big leap for those of us who struggle with insecurities. For most of us, there won’t be a magic fix where we see our photos and think “I am the most stunning creature to ever walk this earth!” but with the right photographer and the right conversations, you may just look at those photos and think, “hey! that photo really looks like me and who I am!” That is a magical thing, and what I want for every client.
As we wrap this up, I want to draw attention to the header photo I’ve used for this blog. I posted that side by side several months ago to highlight the difference between a photo with no make up and no editing to a photo with make up on, retouching, and editing. It’s taken me a long time to be (sort of) comfortable showing the first photo online. And I still made sure to shoot that photo from the side where I have my incisor tooth. ;)