There is probably a version of you that takes pictures all the time. Your camera roll is full of birthdays, vacations, holidays, pets, friends, family, new outfits, dinners, and completely ordinary moments that felt worth remembering. You’re documenting the people you love and the life happening around you, but how often do you take photos of yourself? And of the ones you’re actually in, how many do you genuinely love?
We have become better at documenting our lives than any generation before us, yet somehow so many women are still missing from their own photographic history. We take hundreds of pictures and then avoid the camera ourselves because we don’t like our arms in that shirt, we’re unhappy with our weight, our hair isn’t cooperating, or we simply don’t feel “photogenic” today.
The strange thing is that photographs have a way of becoming more valuable with time. And someday, you may wish you had a lot more photographs of the woman you are right now.
We’re Always Waiting for a Better Time
There always seems to be a better version of ourselves waiting somewhere in the future. We’ll take the pictures after we lose the weight, grow out our hair, feel more confident, get in shape, find the right outfit, or finally have a good enough reason. Maybe next year, or for a milestone birthday, or maybe when life settles down a little.
The problem is that while we’re waiting, life keeps happening. Five years from now, you may look at a photograph you almost deleted today and wonder what on earth you thought was wrong with you. Ten years from now, you may wish you had more pictures from this particular chapter of your life. Twenty years from now, some of the things you’re criticizing in the mirror today may be the very things you’d give anything to see again.
Someday you’re going to wish you had more photographs of the woman you are right now. Not the woman you’re planning to become.
Photographs Become More Valuable With Time
There’s something strange and wonderful about photographs: their value rarely peaks on the day they’re taken. They become more important later.
An ordinary photograph eventually becomes a record of a haircut you forgot you had, a dress you loved, a home you once lived in, a friendship, an adventure or an entire season of your life. That’s part of the reason old photographs have so much power. They don’t simply remind us what we looked like. They remind us who we were.
When we’re photographing the people we love, we seem to understand this instinctively. We don’t wait until our children have perfect hair before taking their picture. We don’t stop wanting photographs of our mothers because they’ve gotten older. We would never look at someone we love and think we’d rather have photographs of them after they lost ten pounds. We want photographs of them because they matter to us.
Over the years, I’ve also learned this in a way I never expected when I first became a photographer. I’ve photographed clients who have since passed away, and later I’ve heard from their daughters, sisters, friends and other people who loved them. Sometimes they’re reaching out because they’re hoping I still have the portraits. Other times, they’re simply writing to thank me for taking them. I’ve been told more than once that these are the most beautiful photographs they have of someone they loved, and that those portraits have become incredibly precious to them.
When I created those photographs, none of us were thinking about what they might mean years later. We were choosing outfits, fixing hair, laughing between poses and creating something beautiful together. They were simply portraits. Until one day, they weren’t. They became part of how someone was remembered.
That’s something I carry with me now. We tend to think photographs of ourselves are for us, and of course they are. But someday, they may belong just as much to the people who love us. The things you criticize about yourself in a photograph aren’t what they’re going to see. They’re going to see you.
Maybe we deserve to see ourselves with a little more of that same love while we’re still here.
“But I’m Just Not Photogenic”
If you’ve ever thought this, you have plenty of company. It’s one of the things I’ve heard most often in nearly two decades of photographing women.
Here’s the thing: most people have absolutely no idea what to do in front of a camera because why would they? You aren’t supposed to instinctively know where to put your hands, how to position your body, what to do with your chin or which tiny adjustment will completely change the way you photograph. Those are learned skills, and when you come to Lone Star Pin-up, they’re also my job.
The women you see throughout our galleries aren’t professional models. They’re women who walked through the studio doors with the same nerves, insecurities and questions almost everyone has. Professional hair and makeup, wardrobe styling, lighting and posing certainly help create the finished image, but none of those things suddenly make someone worthy of being photographed. She was worthy when she walked in.
Photographs Can Capture More Than How You Looked
One of the things I love most about portrait photography is that it can preserve something a quick snapshot doesn’t always capture. A great portrait doesn’t just document what you looked like on a particular day. It can capture your personality, your confidence, your softness, your sense of humor, your boldness, your glamour and even the parts of yourself you don’t get to bring out very often.
Maybe there’s a version of you who has always wanted to wear the ridiculous dress. Maybe she wants enormous hair and red lipstick, sequins and feathers, cowboy boots, lingerie or something wonderfully over the top. Maybe she wants to know what she’d look like as an Old Hollywood movie star. Or maybe she simply wants one photograph where she looks at herself and thinks, Damn. That’s me.
That’s why I’ve never really thought of what we do at Lone Star Pin-up as turning women into someone else. The hair, makeup, wardrobe, sets and styling might create a little fantasy, but the woman in the finished portrait is still you. Sometimes you’re simply meeting a side of yourself you haven’t had the opportunity to see before.
You Don’t Need a Special Occasion
We have a funny habit of believing professional photographs need to be justified by something. Weddings deserve photographs. Graduations deserve photographs. Babies, anniversaries and milestone birthdays deserve photographs. Somehow simply existing as the woman you are today doesn’t always seem like a good enough reason. To the surprise of no one, I disagree.
You don’t need to be celebrating a milestone, and the photographs don’t have to be a gift for someone else. You certainly don’t need to change your body first. You’re allowed to want beautiful photographs of yourself simply because this version of you existed and deserves to be remembered.
There will never be another moment when you are exactly the age you are today, with exactly this face, this body, this hair, this laugh, this life and this particular collection of experiences behind you. That isn’t meant to make getting older sound scary. Quite the opposite. Changing is part of living, and photographs give us a way to keep little pieces of all the people we get to be along the way.
Take the Pictures
So take more pictures. Hand someone else the phone once in a while. Get in the group photo. Wear the outfit you’ve been saving instead of waiting for somewhere important enough to wear it. Try not to delete a photograph you otherwise love because you noticed one tiny thing about yourself that nobody who loves you would ever care about.
And at least once in your life, give yourself the experience of being intentionally photographed. Not because you’ve finally reached some magical age, weight or level of confidence that makes you worthy of it, but because you don’t need to earn the right to exist beautifully in photographs.
Your future self isn’t going to be searching for pictures of some imaginary perfect version of you. She’s going to want to remember the woman who was actually here. And the people who love you will, too.
This woman. This version. Right now. Take the pictures. Someday, you’ll be very glad you did.
