The Secret to Beautiful Portraits

It started a year ago, when I bought myself balloons for my birthday and did a photo shoot with them. It was really fun. The balloons brought me a lot of joy because they were something I would never usually do for myself. It turned out I also really liked the photos. So I figured I could do it again this year…but with something other than balloons.

I also really like cupcakes. So I used that for this year’s inspiration.

I visualized what I wanted the photos with cupcakes to look like. Set up the cupcake with candles and a shiny gold backdrop. Made the photo that was living in my head (yes, my brain is filled with photos. I’m pretty sure I think in photos these days, kind of like a new language). That part was a success, but didn’t leave me feeling especially excited. In fact, I was starting to feel nervous and uneasy because my next idea would be much harder to execute.

Then I tried to turn the camera on myself, with the cupcake. The results…got deleted before they ever made it out of the camera and on to a hard drive.

I changed outfits. I changed lenses. I changed the angle I was facing to try to find better light. I changed everything I could think of to try to make this photoshoot work. Nothing did.

Maybe I’m the only one, but when I see bad photos of myself, I get depressed. I allow it to consume me, define me, become all that I can think about until I can prove to myself (with a thousand other really good photos) that it is possible that I am not fat/ugly/unloveable or whatever other negative things I swear I saw in that terrible photo. And then I feel guilty for being so vain.

It took some self-reflection not to give up on this photo, because, although seeing the bad photos on the back of my camera was disheartening, I didn’t want to let myself believe that the bad photos would be the only possible outcome…and a very small part of me wanted to keep going because at this point I had put in a lot of effort (effort = showering, and doing hair and makeup, and giving more than five seconds of thought to my outfit, plus setting everything up) to make it happen. Finally I gave up on using my “real” camera and just got out my iPhone.

That was the right change. I could feel myself relaxing and having fun with the photoshoot again. It worked. I got one photo, the first one I took, and moved on to other things.

I’ve read probably every single one of the articles and blog posts about why we hate photos of ourselves and why nobody else thinks you look as bad as you think you do. But none of that matters or helps me rationalize a bad photo of myself when I see one. Maybe because I am a photographer, I have this crazy idea that the camera is incapable of lying. If I see an ugly photo, I have to believe it because I saw it. The only thing that helps is seeing a (whole lot) of good photos that tell me otherwise. Most of which were taken in high school.

And then I started thinking about why my favorite photos are from high school.

Those were the days before Facebook, before Instagram, before social media. We took pictures of ourselves without really worrying about who else was going to see them, judge them, because most likely they’d end up living only on our bedroom wall or maybe in a photo album on a bookshelf that we’d take out to reminisce about the good times. They were taken with disposable cameras and rudimentary digital point-and-shoots, and yet they are still some of my favorite photos. Those were the days when I loved having my picture taken…and I was happy and looked happy in almost every photo.

I think that matters…happiness matters. I can actually see how much fun we were having in those photos. In fact, none of the photos that I like of myself were taken when I wasn’t having a good time. My favorite photos from our wedding are the ones where I can see that the nerves had fallen away and we were enjoying the moment, laughing with each other. In those sweet seconds, I wasn’t worried about the size of my nose or what my hair looked like. I wasn’t contorting my face into a pretend emotion, fake-giggling, or pretending to be a model. I was comfortable, confident, and content.

I still think the camera doesn’t lie. But I think it does pick up our emotions, the ones hiding behind our smiles, and it does pick up our insecurities. Especially when we’re thinking about them or worrying about how we look when we see a camera.

The secret to making photos that you absolutely love isn’t about making yourself look perfect. Perfection means nothing if it keeps you from being yourself. It is far better to make photos in places and with people that will bring you joy and make you feel excited, beautiful, confident, completely carefree, and at ease. Those are the feelings that will shine through.

The best portraits, the ones where you look the most like the person you want to be, are made when you feel like that person…having a good time, surrounded by people or places who bring out the best in you…perfectly happy.

I’m a photographer who hates photos of herself. But I’m using the bad photos to accept who I am, find joy in the good ones and bring cheerfulness into everything I create.