As photographers, we understand that most people have a love/hate relationship with us. And we embrace that. We know that if we capture a good photo of you, you’ll love us. But if we capture a bad photo of you, you will spit on the ground every time you hear our name. Sometimes just walking into a room with a big camera makes people run and hide from us.
It can be emotionally draining to do our job: we have to be a bit of Dr. Jekyll and Mx. Hyde. When we’re taking someone’s photo our first goal is to make it as positive of an experience as possible. We give you affirmations on how good you look and maybe even some breathing exercises to calm your nerves, and after every shutter click adding a quick reminder that having your photo taken is hard and you’re doing great.
But we also have to be a monster who nit-picks your hair, your posing, the creases in your jacket, and the knot in your tie, so a lousy photo isn’t recorded for posterity. Because if we don’t do that for you, YOU will rip apart your photo and hate the way you look, and the last thing we want is for you to feel lousy about yourself when you leave our studio.
We all deserve a good-looking photo of ourselves. But we all also deserve to love ourselves as we look. So what’s the balance?
This is the philosophical question we ponder every time we pick up our cameras. Sometimes we’ll take a photo of someone and hear them say “man I hate my tummy.” And it breaks our heart because we don’t hate your tummy. We’re very body-positive people here (and body neutral if that’s more your style): having a body and keeping it alive is hard work so we want to celebrate all our bodies and faces and the many shapes and sizes and designs they come in. We want to shout at you, “F*#& it! We all have tummies so what’s wrong with yours being in a photo of you no matter what it looks like!!”
But our job is also to look for the worst in a photo and help minimize it and redirect attention to better features. Because you don’t want a Pollyanna photographer who thinks everything looks great; you want one who will nit-pick you as much as you nit-pick you, so you both have the same goals for the photo.
It helps that we get it. We’ve also all seen our own tummies in photos and we have also cried a little wail of “oh man is THAT what my tummy looks like? Is that what people see when they see my face? Is my hair that thin? That frizzy? Damn I’ve gotten old.”
This month we all took photos of each other to get a reminder of how awful it can feel having your photo taken. But we also stood behind the camera for each other coaching and cheering each other on, so we also felt how good it can feel having your photo taken. (More on that harrowing experience and what we learned from it coming soon.)
We’re the coach who will motivate you into great poses, but also bench an outfit that isn’t doing your shape any favors. Just don’t dump a tub of Gatorade on us after the photo session.