How I found my self confidence
I want to start this blog with a disclaimer - I am not cured from self esteem issues, imposter syndrome and all that good stuff that queues up to kick you when you’re down. I still have that little voice in the back of my mind that tells me I’m not good enough and I don’t know what I’m doing. With the help of a wonderful friend I named that voice Crystal, drew a picture of her as a women with horrid, pointy, half metre fingernails in entirely red PVC that looked remarkably like Christine from Selling Sunset, and sat her in the backseat of the car driving my thoughts. A touch on the woo woo side but can sometimes help to literally tell someone to shut the f**k up when the negativity gets too loud.
But confidence is a muscle that needs to be worked out like you go to the gym, or head out for a run. It doesn’t just show up one day and never leave, it grows with each pull up, learned experience and with evidence to keep spurring you on.
A journey in self portraiture
So when Emily Joan’s self portrait challenge came out, 4 weeks of prompts to play with, I can’t say I jumped at the chance to give it a go. To be brutally honest, I watched everyone else get excited about it and got FOMO so I joined in.
I’ve always hated self portraits. You have to give up the control of lining up the perfect shot, getting perfect focus, trying new things quickly. Everything feels hard, the camera works against you and you cack handedly have to faff around with remotes and poses and gear to be able to get anything remotely resembling a decent shot. Unless you check all of that in at the door, ditch any sort of timeline and just enjoy the journey of just being a little bit weird.
Photo’s from my self portrait challenge
Signing up to a challenge wasn’t the confidence cure
Now, dear reader, do not assume that I took a self portrait and rose from a confidence slumber just like sleeping beauty. Not at all. I spent 4 weeks battling my own made up rules as to what a self portrait even was (I literally sent Emily a message to say I had cheated one week because my cat had snuck into the frame and she asked me who made up those rules…) and trying not to tear apart my own face. Because it’s all very well being able to lean into the beauty and the emotion of a wonderful client when they are in the frame, but when it’s yourself all that stuff you harp on about like seeing your smile as a reflection of happiness etc etc goes flying out the window like a cat chasing an enthusiastic pigeon.
But what I did do was lean into the process. I did self portraits in my pjs on my bed because there was a nice patch of light one day. I chucked a fisherman’s jumper on with no trousers and went and messed around in hiking boots in my greenhouse (which the cats have definitely adopted as their outhouse for rainy day toilet activities) because I wanted to be weird and by embracing the ridiculous, and with the wonderful feedback that the community gave me, I grew in confidence a little bit each day. To the point now if I’m in a studio and someone asks me to drape myself in see-through tulle and get weird on the floor - I’m game.
It was a long journey to self acceptance
Now my own personal photography journey didn’t start with self portraits. There had been a long build up to it. I had been to events surrounded by photographers taking photos, getting weird and wild with other women, being encouraged to model and join in. I also know that as someone behind that camera I’m not criticising wobbly bits, I’m teasing out genuine expression. You can find out what I’m actually thinking when I shoot in this blog post HERE. I was no stranger to being in front of the camera but I don’t think it was until the self portrait challenge that I realised that self esteem can be a choice. As the only thing that told you you weren’t good enough was actually weird societal pressure and glossy magazines.
Who tells us we don’t look good enough? Men that own advertising agencies. That’s ultimately the bottom line.
So let’s add a massive cliché in here for good measure. You don’t know how you’ll actually react to something until you try it and you wont be good at something until you do it more than once. So book that shoot you’ve been putting off because you’re desperately trying to lose a few kilos. Chat to a photographer that talks to you like a human and you genuinely want to go and hang out in a coffee shop with, then let them coax out of you the expressions that you might be a bit nervous to give at the start.
Confidence is a process and it usually starts when you step straight out of that comfort zone.
Ready to take that first step?
I’m here to guide you, help you, and just have a cute coffee and a chat to start off with.
Trust me, once you get your first shoot experience done, you’ll be shouting ‘again, again!’ like a child that discovered a rollercoaster for the first time.
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More photos of me playing around in my house/garden. Can you spot the cat?
