i think it's brave: to not be scared of a "bad" photo
a reflection on my wedding photos, 1 year later
Last week was my one-year wedding anniversary but don't worry, this post is not offering marriage advice. I am 1 year in, there are many more people qualified for that, and I am still learning from them (and will be, for probably the rest of my life).
Instead, I want to talk about my wedding photos.
Like many modern-day brides, my wedding photographer felt like the biggest decision I would make. As someone who shoots her own film, it was always important to me that the person I hired do the same. If they did, I knew they would understand how I wanted our wedding memorialized. I was looking for photos that captured raw emotion and transported us back to the moment when we look at them. Not too many portraits (I regret this a little, I wish we did more), nothing too stiff, just a collection of photos from the weekend that showed my husband and I, and our favorite people. After speaking with a few wonderful people, we selected Chris Glenn, who shot my friend from high school's wedding the year prior. If you are getting married, I highly recommend Chris. He was everything I was looking for, and Aidan liked him too, which was of course important as boys stereotypically hate getting their photo taken. When we asked Chris about how he would pose us, he told us he had tricks up his sleeve that would capture us before and during the pose, which is how he got the perfect shot. He is effortlessly cool and has a brilliant library of past shoots, but he really sold us with that one line.
The day of our wedding I was so relaxed, which was on no one's bingo card. Maybe it was being at home, maybe it was the small group of special people around me, but I was more go-with-the-flow than I have ever been in my life. Normally someone who doesn't like being in front of the camera, I quickly warmed to the idea of it being around. Sometimes I barely noticed it and sometimes I sought it out, framing a photo in my mind and asking what he thought. It was exactly how I hoped it would be and when we got the photos back, I was elated. 1,200 photos of pure happiness. I loved each more than the last. I couldn't stop looking at them!!! But after a few flips through the whole album, I started picking myself apart. I started noticing that I had multiple chins whenever I smiled too hard and that my soft smile attempts didn't have the Tyra Banks smize I had hoped for. I noticed the extra skin at the crease of my armpit and the hair flying out of my bun. It's so unfortunate that a part of my brain is programmed for this type of thinking. I vividly remember how it felt to have to rein my brain back in…
Last week, however, I flipped through those same photos for the first time in quite a while. But this time, I looked at the photos and couldn't believe myself for being upset with how I looked in some of them. I looked so happy it brought tears to my eyes. Photos I skipped over last year have become new favorites. It's amazing what time and space can do for perspective.
It made me think of a piece I read this year on Substack (I forget who wrote it please tag them if this sounds familiar) about taking photos for aesthetic purposes vs. the memories themselves. So often we are taking photos of inanimate objects, but when we look back, we can't place them. Or if we can place them, we have no photos of the person or people we had the experience with! How many times have you gone to dinner and left with photos of the food but not your friends? It's actually quite sad. But you don’t need sign off when it comes to a photo of your entree, and I think that is why we have those gaps.
Over the years, I've heard the phrase that we are taking a photo "for the moms," the group relishing in the idea that the photos won't go anywhere public. Even if we look bad no one else will see it. We don't ask to look at these photos afterwards, don't ask to take them again. We just move on, as we should, and enjoy the moment at present. And in the end we have what is always a perfect photo to look back on, perhaps not by Instagram standards, but because no one was stressed, sucking in or overly posed. Everyone is simply smiling.
When I think about all of this, I realize how the concept of personal photography has gone a bit off the rails. Though our parents' generation took photos, they were usually for big moments like birthdays, graduations, recitals or vacations. Now with a camera always in our hand, there is pressure to capture every memory, every first. It’s like we’ve been reprogrammed to think that if we don’t capture it, it didn’t happen, a la the videos of concert crowds watching their phones vs. the stage. To me, that lingering itch can suck a lot of joy out of the small moments that make up our lives. I’ll never forget the day I saw 5 adults taking photos of 1 child standing in front of a NYC pretzel cart, making him wait to eat the pretzel until they got the shot. Watching the scene, I felt so badly for the little boy, questioning what was the point of this photo in the first place? Are the tastes and sounds and sights not enough to create a lasting memory?
I guess all of this is to say that the culture of taking photos has become less about capturing a moment and more about projecting an image to the world. That's what happens when every picture has the potential to go onto the Internet. The practice has come to involve way too many people. Photo albums used to be physical items that lived in our homes, viewed only by our families and loved ones. Now they are digital streams, curated for feeds, favorites chosen and the rest forgotten in the depths of our phones.
If we think about photos in the context of the home, then it really shouldn’t matter what we look like. Our families and friends already know, and they love us despite our outward appearance. Sure, your family will tell you when there is a bad photo, that’s what family is for. But they’re never going to judge you for it, never going to take it at face value. And maybe that’s what we need. To go back to the little books of plastic protected print outs, filled with memories from special moments in our lives. When we look at them together, we can see a weekend, a month, a year. And the little moments can live in our mind’s eye, through stories being told and the feeling the memories give us. For the small amount we actually look back at our iPhone photos, we really should take less. Maybe we would look back more if it felt more manageable to sort through thousands of photos of food and sunsets as we look for faces.
Below are some of the “bad” photos from my wedding album, where I thought my arms looked big or the skin on my neck folded too much. Looking back now, I see just how happy I was and how much fun I was having. Big smiles make some big wrinkles, and that’s just the price I have to pay. Worth it every single time.
Maybe the post you are thinking of was called something like “I regret what’s in my camera roll” - I read something similar earlier this year and it resonated so much, and this is a lovely extension of thoughts. Not only have I intentionally started taking more photos of people instead of my stuff, I’ve decided to post more of the “unflattering” photos (with permission of course, even though through the lens of love they’re all beautiful images) to my private IG since it’s sort of our modern scrapbook and I want to look back on these days and see my friends and family rather than objects I’ve purchased!
I have an album on my phone called photos I hated but now love. Sometimes distance is all it takes for a photo to become something I can stand!
Your wedding looks absolutely fun and beautiful.