Loving the image in the mirror

A lot of photographers love being photographed or take self-portraits, I was never one of them until recently.
I couldn’t look at my image looking back at me without criticizing everything that was wrong and that I didn’t like with my face and body. Falling in love with yourself is not an easy task to do since we always are our worse self critics and the negative self-talk is always there to throw you a curveball of how ugly, fat, skinny, old, pathetic or what ever verbal abuse you tell yourself in the mirror. One day I looked in the mirror and I told myself this has to stop and acceptance and self-love have to be part of my essence and my soul to live my life to the fullest. How could I capture the self-love in my client’s images if I couldn’t love myself.
When I look at this portrait that my very talented LA-based photographer friend Aaron Jay Young captured of me last week, I first went to negative self-talk and though man … I look old and I was tempted to photoshop my wrinkles out but Aaron has a gift of seeing you, like really seeing your soul maybe even seeing a part of yourself that you didn’t know. I know I am aging and that I will never look 25 again so throw that bullshit you keep telling yourself in the mirror out the window and look into your eyes and tell yourself – I love you just the way you are.
Let’s boycott the word photogenic, who the heck came up with that analogy anyway to determine who is and who is not photogenic, photogenic compared to who? We are all one of a kind unique human beings. How about we change it to soulgenic because when your soul shows up in your portrait that is when the magic happens.

A big thank you to Aaron Jay Young for seeing my soul.