Warwick blogger Miruna Constantinescu shares her personal story of overcoming the pressure to "strike a pose" and capture every single moment on camera.
As you are probably aware, our generation is more often than not accused of neglecting the moment due to digital absent-mindedness which probably around 80% of us can admit to suffering from... For example, we get invited to a wedding and instead of listening to the couple's vows and being captured by the sanctity of the event, we resume to Instagram stories or Facebook live streams as profane depictions of a distorted reality.
The passion towards photography tends to be associated by many with the same virtual craze that distracts us from what actually happens outside the frame of the pic, so I cannot help but wonder...do we really become captured in a world of our own by striking a pose? Should we draw a fine line between art and airbrushed madness or must photography involve a grain of insanity in order to gain its authenticity?
Fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh, an artist renowned for his black and white portraits, justifies his refusal to retouch faces and bodies in his pictures and states that "we’ve grown accustomed to seeing personalities drained of all their humanity, yet we consider them as real." So, in other words, we are afraid of exposing our natural traits in front of the camera, simply for the sake of taking the 'perfect' photograph, which resembles those we admire with a sigh of regret when we flick through fashion magazines. I dare to give my readers a spoiler but... beauty really is easier to find in a spontaneous burst of laughter or in an unstudied picture pose and once we learn to accept this fact, we’ll free ourselves of all unnecessary anxious thoughts! (By the way, I am not sharing cliché words of wisdom with you. I, myself, learnt this lesson and trust me, it was a relief to see how true sense of style can be achieved so effortlessly if you try hard to overcome the habit of perfecting every photo you take).
It all started a year ago when I had my 'Coming of Age' party. My parents decided to hire a photographer to take some professional family photos at our home an hour before the official event started. I had no objections until shortly before the photographer was about to arrive at our house and I suddenly started to feel very tense. Countless questions were bubbling up in my mind, but I did not have the courage to say out loud how nervous I was about the shoot, and, therefore, I was doomed to the silent burden of anxious thoughts floating above my head. I felt almost silly to be worrying about having a few family photos. However, as my literature teacher used to tell me in high school, I always had a thing for perfection. I have always been in the search of the perfect ideas and the perfect words, so, at that moment, I dreaded the thought of some imperfect family photographs. Once the photographers arrived, they picked some unexplored corners of our house to shoot and I must admit, the shots they took looked amazing. I was pleasantly surprised how ideal of a location my home was for taking some genuinely beautiful pics which even now give me the chills when I look at them.
Annie Leibovitz said that when photographing somebody, a crucial step of the process is getting to know that person, because otherwise, it all becomes artificial and deprived of emotion. During that shoot, I learned to know myself to the core, to embrace every smile and spontaneous gesture, and to get carried away by the magic of the moment. This way, my happiness escapes the click! of the photo and reaches the observer.
The only thing I can say is that at the end of the day, we all need to learn and accept that flaws, frowns and wrinkled shirts are part of a reality which is in fact very 'in style', because actually, it represents who we really are!
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