You look AMAZING in that photo….yes YOU!

You look AMAZING in that photo….yes YOU!

Recently a lovely client of ours suggested that we should write a blog and remind you all to be careful that you don’t fall into the trap of over zealous deleting.  As you would know we are all for having a nice manageable sized photo collection by ongoing maintenance (including deleting) but today we want to talk about why we think Wendy was right… so step away from the delete button.

It’s all about YOU!  Remember how amazing I said you looked?

Often when we are looking at photos of OURSELVES we are overly critical… thinking things like: my hair is awful, look at my eye bags, I am so fat in that photo, why did I smile so hard it makes my eyes all squinty and my personal bug bear ‘I should’ve taken off my glasses’… and the list could go on.  The trouble with being overcritical means that you are likely to delete way too many photos and suddenly you will find you have erased yourself from the family photo collection, effectively erasing yourself from the family history.

The reality is that when your children or grandchildren look back on those photos that you deemed as a ‘bad hair day’ – they will relate and think ‘look grandma had uncontrollable curls like me’ and resonate with their family history.

In regards to my glasses bug bear… can I ask people who wear glasses all the time to please leave them on for photos.  Technology has improved in leaps and bounds in relation to the lenses and to cameras – your lenses won’t reflect like days of past and you will look like YOU, like you look every day and as such be a more familiar and recognisable face in years to come.

Jo can attest to the fact that she was over zealous and now has little to no evidence of her teenage years. Something she is already starting to regret. I struggled to find this shot of me in the early 1990s with my braces showing and I know I likely only kept it to remember my day out with my best friend from primary school whom I hadn’t seen in a few years (at the time).  But I know that if my daughter needs braces and goes through a ‘phase’ of being unhappy about her smile she will take comfort in looking at this photo.

I would like to share with you a passage from a great NY Times article I read recently titled “The Freedom That Comes When You Can Finally Say ‘I’m Too Old for This’ “… talking about a case of old photos she found…. ” here I was, ages 4 to 40. And I saw for the first time that even when I was in the depths of despair about my looks, I had been beautiful.

And there were all my friends; girls and women with whom I had commiserated countless times about hair, weight, all of it, doling out sympathy and praise, just as I expected it heaped upon me: beautiful, too. We were, we are, all beautiful. …..Young(er) women, take this to heart: Why waste time and energy on insecurity? I have no doubt that when I’m 80, I’ll look at pictures of myself when I was 60 and think how young I was then, how filled with joy and beauty.”

So next time you are about to hit delete on that photo of yourself consider if you are being overly critical and ask yourself; Does the photo tell a story?  Will my children or grandchildren enjoy this photo in the future?  Will I enjoy this photo in the future?

Remember what I said… you look AMAZING!

Have a magical day.

1Comment
  • Please Don’t Go KonMari On Your Photos! | The Filing Fairies
    Posted at 09:16h, 07 March

    […] again we heartily disagree!  We wrote about this very topic recently where we reminded you that “You look AWESOME in that photo, yes you!”  where we reminded you about PERSPECTIVE and RETROSPECTIVE.  Just because you think you terrible […]