I’ve always hated candid photos.
Pictures of myself that aren’t orchestrated and shot by me aren’t good pictures. Is it because I know myself better than others know me? That I’m able to capture my own essence, while others seem to display my worst angles?
I have a feeling that I’m not alone in this. Many girls around my age have Instagram pages full of their selfies, a perfect library of their own photos. We’ve come a long way in limiting the amount of photoshop we use to edit our photos, the most I do nowadays is add a fun color filter!
But with or without photoshop and all the likes I may get, I still can’t love my smile as much as I feel I should.
That’s a sentence I really don’t enjoy saying.
Sure, I think I’m pretty, but when it’s captured in pictures it just doesn’t feel the same. Nearly all of my Instagram photos are from the shoulders up. If I’m not able to have fun taking pictures and sharing them for the sake of sharing them, is it even worth it?
My proposed solution to this: document EVERYTHING, even if you won’t share any of it. Take a picture whenever you’re with a friend, you see a cool flower on the street, or you just feel good! I’ve been doing this since I started college last year at the height of the pandemic. Even with the guidelines in place, I still managed to take SO many photos, and I’m so glad I did.
I captured the beauty of the world, and in turn, ended up capturing my own beauty.
I can look back on photos of last year, see my smile as I try on a new outfit, or go out to lunch with a friend, and I realize that I really do love my smile. I love creating memories that aren’t for anyone else but myself. I love documenting my life in little and big ways! Even the candids that I hated so much aren’t so bad anymore, because what is so bad about authenticity?
Snapchat memories have been a huge help in this. Because now I have a private library full of cherished memories documented through pictures and videos from the past five years of my life! I can go back to it and see how I’ve improved since the start of college or even before that! As I’ve documented all the changes around, I would argue that, for me, things have really changed for the better, and I’m not talking just appearance-wise anymore!
And when pictures aren’t taken by me now, I can appreciate how I look, even if it’s not up to my impossible standards.
My smile is brighter now, and I have learned to love it.
I hope you learn to love your own.