The Importance of Outtakes!

Yesterday I went out for a wander to the local community garden in my neighbourhood.  There are actually 2 community gardens a block apart.  The first one, Cottonwood Gardens, is my happy place these days.  But on that day it was packed full of gardeners (which is awesome) so I headed over to the second one a block away.

What I love most about taking photos or self-portraits in a community garden is that there is always SO much to see so it is easy to try one spot and if it isn’t grooving, move on to another.  I had done this for a while, trying a few spots and then found my way to a beautiful blue shed and started taking some arms length selfies with my iphone.

30 photos later I felt totally happy from the experience and looked through them and found the one that felt most like me.  The one that I could look at and feel like I see the woman I am becoming.

As usual after a photo walk I picked a few from the day to share on Instagram and felt drawn to share this one.

But I wanted to tell you how I got there and talk about how important the other 29 photos were.

I feel it is so easy to assume that someone just reached out their arm and got that one shot that they are sharing on Instagram or Facebook.

But for all of us (all of us, for reals) it is often a number of shots until we get that one that feels just right.  I usually change angles, turn from side to side to see which light I like better and truthfully it often takes me a number of shots to just settle into the moment and get settled in my body.

The more photos we take, the more opportunity we give ourselves to get the photo that feels really empowering.  

I also feel like those other 29 photos are just as valuable as that one.  That even if they didn’t get picked for that one that I felt the most connected to, they are all me…showing up in front of the camera.  We don’t tend to get that one (or many) we loved without the rest.

In Be Your Own Beloved we aren’t exploring how to take the perfect self-portrait or even capturing a certain type of beauty.  Not at all, quite the opposite in fact.  In BYO Beloved I am inviting you to just create the space to be seen, by you (and if you’d like, by the community in the class who are all doing the same brave act of seeing themselves with kindness).

Self-portraiture isn’t just about seeing ourselves with kindness too…it is about making space to say ‘this is me today’ or ‘i am worthy of this today’ or ‘I love this moment and want to capture it’ or ‘I feel ______ today’.  It is about inviting ourselves into the visual story of our own lives.

And that process involves outtakes!

Often lots of them in fact.

So I wanted to tell you that this time (and every time I share a selfie) that it is one of many.  That it might have taken 5 minutes or 20 minutes to get that photo.  That I might have only loved this one or I might have been proud of many of them and that while I do this for myself.  I do it in hopes that you will pick up your camera too and make the space for yourself today.  I want to live it in hopes that each time I do you will feel braver in trying it yourself.

So, just in case you need it today, lets give ourselves permission to take a whole lot of photos today!

And I wanted to share some of the outtakes with you!  The first are some outtakes from that one shot and the others are some outtakes for taking some jumping shots (and oh my….you often need to take even more to get that one jumping shot where you get air)!