Photography and Body Image

THERE IS NOTHING THAT I LOVE MORE than receiving comments on the pictures I have taken.

It gives me warm flurries and makes me all happy inside.

I normally play it off as, “thanks, but it’s only because I have a great camera”. Which is completely and totally true. The photography class I took in high school can’t get any of the credit since I don’t remember a single thing.

I am by no means a “pro”. Most of my pictures I take, I get lucky with. My rule of thumb when taking photos is take as many as I can in the moment, and delete out the bad ones after, which means that for every good photo you see, there are five more just like it that are either under or over exposed, or blurry.

But still, compliments? Love them, as long as they are on photos of Kevin, or Ollie, or plants, or munchy children.

Compliments on photos of me make me feel funny. I’m not saying this to sound conceited (read: you are too nice to me), but I get compliments on, “you always look so good in photos!”, “every photo of you is great, I’m so jealous.”

I try to disprove this theory as much as possible by posting blatantly unflattering photos of myself.

That was a year ago.

Two weeks ago?

Yea.

I post these to show that nobody photographs perfectly.

This isn’t just with the photos we take. Even in the photos our photographer gave us there were ones of me that weren’t so hot. I won’t post them because Nate is a wonderful photographer and I’d hate to portray him otherwise. He winds up with a ratio opposite of mine – for every unflattering photo there are twenty more like it that look beautiful, wonderful, stunning.

I would recommend him to anybody.

(Psst. He’ll travel).

(Want the link? Nathaniel Ray Photography. Word).

But even in the most beautiful of photos, I can find a way to tear myself down.

For example.

My shirt is wrinkled.

My hair extension is showing.

My hair looks frizzy.

My stomach looks fat.

This is not an effort to gain compliments. In fact, I’m tempted to turn the comments OFF in this post, and I never do that.

This is just my way of saying that we all have insecurities about our bodies. Even in absolutely perfect photos. It doesn’t matter what you weigh, how tall you are, how much you work out, what your ancestors passed on through their genes.

We are women (are you a guy reader? Sorry to generalize/alienate you). Because of this I believe that we are more in tune to our bodies, and that we tend focus on our body image way more than we should. And when you don’t feel good about your body, everything becomes a “when”. When I lose weight. When I look better. When when when when when.

My friend over at 100 Days in Bed (do you read her? Because you should. She is fabulous.) posted recently about weight and body issues, and I think it’s definitely something that needs to be addressed. I don’t care if you are a size two, or a size twenty. We are all women. We are ALL, at one point or another, insecure about ourselves, our body, our teeth, our hair.

We all think we have those “few extra pounds” that we need to lose to be happy.

Isn’t that ridiculous?

We need to learn to love our curves. We need to learn to be okay in our bodies, but yet not be defined by them. Your body has nothing to do with your personality. Nada. Zip.

Currently I have an extra five pounds that seemed to have tacked themselves onto my hips, just days after someone snarked, “now you can’t gain any weight because you have to fit into your dress!”.

My bridal pictures are tomorrow.

But I’m sticking to what I said. I’m not letting those pounds and the fear that I won’t fit into my taffeta a-line worry me. I will go, put on my dress, look at myself in the mirror and tell myself I am beautiful, regardless of if the back zips up all the way or not.