make me look good

Photography.  I say my current passion started with my iPhone.   Taking pictures here and there of the silly, the pretty, the interesting things that passed my way.   Truth be known – it started years before.  It was a Polaroid.  It was in a huge black case.  It was the “instant” film that took ten minutes to develop. Remember – the kind that you peel the paper away to see the image?  That was the one.  I would see that case in the coat closest of my first home and beg  my parents, “take my picture!”  In third grade,  Santa brought me my very own Polaroid.   I took it with me to birthday parties.  My teddy bears were models.   I would dress in my head-to-toe Esprit and hand over the white boxy contraption with 10 exposures and exclaim, “take my picture!”  Those were the easy years,  I just wanted my picture taken.  Then, puberty hit.  The clothes became even more important.  The hair.  The make up.  The insecurity.   Soon “take my picture”  became “you can only take my picture, if you make me look good”   (For the record, I don’t think the yearbook picture photographer ever heard me)

iPhone fun

In the past few years due to work,  I’ve had the opportunity to have my picture taken by some AMAZING local photographers.   Here I was, years later in life with many lessons supposedly learned  I was to appear as this together, smart woman who wasn’t bothered by the minutiae of life and yet  – the last thing I would say to these poor photographers – “make me look good!”  Three hundred shots later,  I might like three of them.   Really?   I’m that thirteen year old girl all over again.    Is this normal?   Apparently, yes.  I came across this article in the New Yorker.   World Leaders struggle with it, too!  People working towards world peace.  Trillion dollar budgets.  The Lives of their people in the palm of their hands…and at the end of the day, they still worry about that little image.  The image they want the world to see as  …well….”perfect”.  Winston Churchill destroyed one of his portraits after praising it publicly.   This man of great insight, strategy, and wisdom bothered  by a simple painting.  Maybe that picture bothered him because it was too “realistic”.   He knew what he really looked like – inside – and this was it.

www. lancejohnston.com

Images in photography  can be taken in a format called RAW images.  Pros take this RAW image and transform it.  Take away the lines.  Brighten the eyes.  Nip that waist.  Tah-dah!  That together, smart woman is there smiling at us.    I’ve been in a photography workshop with the incredibly talented  Marta Locklear over the past week learning how to improve my skills in this area.  One of our assignments was self portraits.  I find I actually like these.  Really?  Yes!  Why?  Because I have the control of the edits.  Its when another photographer has the images of me that makes it difficult.   What if he doesn’t brush out those worry lines?  What if my eyes look puffy from tears I have shed?    What if the world realizes I often find solace in a cupcake?   What if they see me RAW?

heatherowensphotography.com

No matter how many tweaks I can make to an image in my heart I hear, “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”   I can outwardly be picture perfect and inside I feel like a mess.  God knows exactly what caused these lines.  He knows why I’ve cried.   He knows why I needed that cupcake.  He knows me RAW, and loves me just the same.   This is grace:  Grace takes that ugliness of life and uses it to transform the image.   He sees me (and you)  as picture perfect.  I am so thankful for that.

self portrait

There are far too many photographers ahead of me for me to ever hope to be “the best”.  But I do hope to be real.  I hope to be the kind of photographer that is sensitive to the insecurities on the other side of the lens.  And most of all,  I hope that I don’t get so caught up in the polish and flash of it all, that I quit looking at the heart.

Grace and Peace!