6 Ways to start accepting yourself in photographs
I can give you a thousand reasons why you think you don’t look good in photos, and I guarantee I’ve thought most of them about myself too.
But what’s the crux of it? Why do we think so negatively about ourselves and shy away from having photographs of ourselves? We’re told daily that we are not enough, greying hair, wrinkles. God forbid we start showing signs of aging. Weight gain, the way our teeth are crooked. Many of us do not feel enough or worthy of photographs.
Often it is because we worry about other peoples perception of us and also we know how critical we can be of others and feel that that’s how we too would be perceived.
Our fragile self worth states that if we see an image that we don’t think we look good in, it affirms our low confidence and that is something we want to avoid at all cost.
But the camera captures a split second of time, muscles in places we don’t see in the mirror. We only ever see a flipped version of ourselves in the mirror and we favour it because we’re used to it. We have an idea of what we should look like or think we look different than we do. If you see a pictures of yourself with loads of chins that doesn’t mean that’s what you look like, it’s just a moment that was captured.
I can tell you all the time you are worthy and your family deserve pictures of you but if you believe you look bad in all your pictures there is really a deeper thing at play here. Self acceptance and love is a long road that many of us are still journeying.
So in the meantime what can we do to ensure we still have photographs of ourselves with our families. To be remembered and documented? So that in the future you may even be able to put up a picture of you on the wall…
- Focus on what you were feeling in the pictures not what you look like. Was it a happy time? Was it commemorating a special time in your families life?
- Be compassionate to yourself. If you were heavier than you would like to be had you just had a baby? Were you going through a tough time? Where you focussing on looking after your family rather than working out? Were you just …happy?? Allow yourself to take up space. We are not only worthy of photographs if we are thin. In fact thin people are not the only worthy people in most of life. We are worthy and loveable at any size.
- Realise that the people who love you don’t see or care about the flaws you do. They see you for the glorious being that you are!
- Exposure therapy: Say screw it and get in front of the camera as much as possible. The more we see what we look like the more we come to accept and eventually love it!
When you look back at pictures, more often that not you will wonder what on earth you were worried about. You’ll wish you had relaxed and you’ll wish you had more pictures of the you that exists now. Spend some time in front of the mirror getting real comfortable with yourself. - Find the angles you like. One day hopefully you won’t even need to do that and you’ll like yourself at all angles but for now it’s a start.
- Lastly, choose a photographer who understand lights and who knows how to pick the pictures of you where your personality shines through.
Be kind to yourself and change the narrative that you look awful in pictures. Because you are bloody wonderful. We don’t always know what’s around the corner, so please stop putting it off and I really mean that even if it means you picking a different photographer over me every single time. Get in photographs.
