Confidence Doesn’t Always Stop the Mask From Going Up

I’ve watched it happen hundreds of times now.

Someone walks into a session feeling pretty good. Their hair is styled. They’re dress to the nines. They’re standing tall, smiling, ready.

Then I lift the camera.

And something shifts. Shoulders creep up. The smile gets tight around the edges. A hand finds its way to a hip, then a pocket, then nowhere — because suddenly every part of the body feels like evidence of something.

This isn’t a vanity thing. I want to be clear about that. It’s not about whether someone thinks they’re pretty enough or thin enough or polished enough, though those thoughts show up too. It’s bigger than that. The second a lens points at someone, it’s like every insecurity they’ve ever quietly carried lines up for inspection.

I’ve seen this with people who’d tell you, with total confidence, that they’re comfortable in front of a camera. People who do public speaking for a living. People who run companies. The mask still goes up. It’s just a more sophisticated mask.

Here’s what I think is actually happening: a camera asks you to be looked at. Not performed at, not glanced at — looked at, fully, in a moment that’s going to exist after you’ve left the room. And most of us have spent years getting really good at controlling how we’re perceived. We’ve got the angle we know works, the laugh we do for photos, the version of our face we trust. The camera doesn’t care about any of that. It just sees you, mid-thought, mid-breath, unguarded.

For a lot of people, that’s the scariest part. Not the photo. The unguarded part.

I think about this differently than many photographers because of the road that got me here. Before I picked up a camera professionally, I specialized in life drawing in art school. I’d go to the airport and people watch, just for fun. (That was in the 90s, when anyone could walk to the gates.) I spent twelve years in schools — first as an art teacher, then as a school counselor with my LPC. I worked closely with teenagers from all over Chicago as they were going through all the teen angst, rebellion, and whatever else you want to call it. They were in the process of becoming independent adults, figuring out who they were underneath while hormones were raging. I watched kids armor up the same way adults do in front of my lens now. Different stakes, same instinct: protect the emotions and vulnerability, show that chiseled exterior molded by the way we think others perceive us.

When someone tenses up the second I raise my camera, I don’t see vanity. I see a person mid-negotiation with themselves about how much they’re willing to let show. It’s a process of letting go. Sometimes, I may even tell someone to shake it off (just like Taylor Swift). Sometimes I’ll dance along to the soundtrack playing. I always laugh alongside people and listen to what they have to tell me. I’m often awkward myself. Sometimes I trip. Sometimes I stumble over my words. I join you in that process of letting go.

Because really, you can’t fake your way out of that negotiation. You can’t pose your way into ease. The only way through is actually letting go of the thing you’re protecting — even just for the length of a shutter click. Learning to love a photo of yourself isn’t really about lighting or angles, though those always help. It’s about whether you’ve made peace with being looked at as you actually are, not as the curated idea of you.

Just relax and be yourself – is not helpful.

That’s a much bigger ask than “just relax and be yourself,” I know. Nobody has ever relaxed because someone told them to. It’s like when a doctor tells you to breathe normally when they’re listening to your lungs, and your brain goes into overdrive. Breathing easily and naturally is now difficult because you’re focusing on every breath.

What actually helps is practice. Reps. A creativity practice of any kind — drawing badly, dancing alone in your kitchen, writing things you’ll never publish — builds the same muscle that lets you exist in front of a camera without flinching. You’re training yourself to make something imperfect and let it exist anyway. You’re training yourself to fully love and accept yourself, even when you mess up. That’s the whole skill.

This is part of why I don’t believe in just showing up and “getting some headshots.” If you’ve never sat with someone who’s thought about what’s underneath the mask before they ever lift the lens, you’re going to spend the whole session bracing. A lot of the work I do happens in conversation, in noticing what makes someone come alive, in building trust before the camera even comes out.

Studying people has taught me a lot.

Because here’s what I know for sure after all these years of studying people: the photos people end up loving most are never the ones where they look the most composed. They’re the ones where you can tell, just looking at them, that the person let something real slip through. The unscripted laugh. The slightly-too-honest eye contact. The moment the mask cracked.

That’s not a flaw in the photo. That’s the whole point of it. That’s actually a person’s beautiful spark shining through.

If you’ve spent your life feeling like you’re never quite ready for the camera, I’d push back on that a little. You’re not unready. You’re just protecting something. And that’s worth understanding before you ever book a session — for yourself, whatever that looks like for you right now, or for how you want to be seen within your business brand.

If you want to talk through what that might look like for you, I’m here.