How to be Confident During a Photoshoot

The biggest hurdle for people to book a photoshoot is confidence - or lack of. We all struggle with our self image: some more than others, but none of us are totally happy and confident in our own skin.

Clients will often ask me before a photo session if I can help them with posing, what they should wear or if I can photoshop something they’re insecure about. Some even go as far as watching posing tutorial on Youtube or practice their expression in front of the mirror.

None of these will make you more confident, instead it will stifle you during your session because you are going to try and remember the instructions from the tutorials or be concerned with what your face + body looks like at any given moment.

This kind of preparation will prevent you from being present in the moment and relax into your body - instead it will keep you stuck in your head.

So how exactly do you gain the confidence to do a portrait session and how do you act confident during it?

Photoshoots to me, are a very intimate thing. The strangeness of having your photo taken is why choosing the right photographer is so crucial for your experience.

You need the right photographer for your project and purpose of the photos. Communicate your fears, your insecurities and your ideas with your photographer. And then trust that photographer.

A photoshoot can be confronting too because unless you are taking a passport photo - it is hard to let someone else truly see you through the anonymous black hole of a lens, without the human eye contact nonetheless. Which is why I only shoot on live view, so people still see my face and we can look at each other.

Of course, photo sessions are not a magic wand that will solve all of your self-esteem issues. I wish that were the case. But they achieve something incredibly special: We see ourselves literally through the eyes of someone else. If we allow ourselves that perspective, we will see what they see when they look at us: the fun, the beauty, the love, the power, the weakness, the fight, the soul.

Because photographs are more than products - they are witnesses - it is incredibly important to choose your portrait photographer with care. Make sure you don’t simply like a trendy aesthetic - but are aligned with their values and their process. Because who they are will influence your shoot and how you feel about the images after.

Of course, this is a responsibility on both sides: The photographers process as well as the clients own inner work. Neither one can do this alone.

Confidence, like many other things, is a muscle. It won’t fall into your lap if you sit and wait for it. You have to exercise it like a muscle, you need to train confidence in order to become more confident, which means putting yourself in situations that make you feel insecure.