What I Wish More Women Understood About Themselves

I've been photographing women for over a decade. And there is one thing that happens in almost every single session, with almost every single woman, regardless of age or background or why she came in.

She sees the first image on the back of the camera, and she goes quiet.

Not because she's disappointed. Because she doesn't recognize herself. Not in a bad way. In the way that happens when you finally see something that was true all along, but nobody ever showed you directly.

That moment never gets old for me. And it also breaks my heart a little every time because what it means is that she spent years not seeing it.

Most women I meet lead with an apology

I'm not very photogenic. I've put on weight. I hope you can work with me.

I hear some version of this almost every week. And it's always from women who are genuinely, obviously beautiful. Not in a packaging way. In a real way. The kind that comes from having lived something.

But they don't see it. They've looked in the mirror so many times that they stopped actually looking and started just confirming the story they already decided was true.

I think about that a lot.

The mirror is actually a terrible way to see yourself

You've been staring at your own face your whole life. You know every asymmetry. You know exactly which angle bothers you. You've built up years of evidence for a case against yourself.

The camera doesn't know any of that. It just catches a fraction of a second in considered light, in a moment when you're not performing for yourself and gives something back that's often much closer to how the people who love you actually see you.

That gap between the two is where I work. That's what I find interesting. That's honestly why I do this.

The waiting thing

When I lose the weight. When things calm down. When I feel more like myself.

I understand it. I've said versions of it myself about other things. But I've noticed that the women who wait until they feel ready, they wait a long time. Often indefinitely.

The women who come in anyway, who decide that this moment is worth documenting even though it's imperfect and they're tired and nothing feels fully settled, those are the ones who walk out looking like themselves. Sometimes, for the first time in a long time.

Readiness isn't a feeling you arrive at. It's just a decision you make.

What I actually see when I'm shooting

I see the way a woman holds herself when she forgets to be self-conscious. The way her face changes when she laughs at something she didn't expect. The way she looks when she goes still for just a second and doesn't realize anyone is watching.

I see someone who has been through things. Who has built things, who is still in the middle of becoming something.

And I'm just trying to make an image that's honest about all of that.

The thing I actually wish women knew

You don't have to earn this. You don't have to lose the weight first or wait for a milestone or arrive at some more deserving version of yourself.

The version that exists right now is uncertain, in progress, and unrepeatable; that's the one worth photographing.

Because in twenty years you won't wish you'd waited. You'll just wish you'd come in sooner.