I just love seeing confidence in people. I’m not talking about cockiness or arrogance, I mean pure confidence. That’s what I got to observe recently over two days while taking headshots, and it was amazing to see.
The idea for this blog post came during this two day photography session. However my original topic was entirely different. It was going to be about taking the first frame – how often the ‘test shot’ ends up being selected as the winning shot, or at least my winning shot. How it often shows the real person, as they haven’t set their ‘game face’ yet. It’s the shot that they don’t expect to count and you are able to capture that moment where their guard is down and really see them. But as I reflect on the two days of shoot I did, taking the portraits of some amazing people I realised there is a much bigger better story there. One of confidence.
Of the 20-ish people that I photographed over these two days, only a couple (maybe three) had partaken in a photo session before – keep that in mind when you look at these photos. Now I’ve said before that people in the performing arts are fantastic to shoot. They are generally comfortable performing in front of people, are excellent at taking direction, and have great body awareness. But what really struck me, like never before, was the confidence it gave people. For me it was one of those truly eye opening experiences.
In my younger years I would have run away from the idea of being centre stage. That whole ‘fear of being judged’ was all too real for me. And yet these guys demonstrated a self-belief or self-confidence that allowed them to overcome what would have crippled me and experience something new.
It was fantastic to hear one of the young women tell her mum that she loved the experience so much, and that she came away from it feeling excited, pretty and confident. (I always want shoots with me to be fun, of course!) But what was even more moving was hearing her mum tell her that she should always feel that way and that she should never let anyone make her feel otherwise.
I’ve always considered photography to be my all access pass into other people’s lives. I get to see and experience things I’d never usually get to. And it’s experiences like this ‘simple’ photo shoot that will stick with me for a long while.
