This is the latest advert from Dove – it’ll only take literally a minute of your day to watch it, and it’s something I’d really like you to see:

I’m camera shy.  I hate having my picture taken.  I much prefer staying on the other side of the camera, being the one taking the pictures of everyone else.  On the rare occasion someone else does get a hold of my camera and snap a picture, the finished result usually ends up with me turning my face away, or putting my hand up to block the view of me.

My girls on the other hand, love posing (unless they are tired, in which case I get given ‘the hand’ too!)

Usually though, I just have to point my camera at them, say “Smile!” and they almost always happily oblige, beaming their gorgeous grins at me instantly and on demand, completely openly and honestly and trustingly.

 

I’m sure I probably used to be like that when I was younger.  I can’t remember when it changed to the way I have always been as I’ve got older – the way it has been right up until now.

You see, now I actually really regret that there aren’t more pictures of me.  As I flick through my photo albums, or watch my photos scroll through on my screensaver, my absence in the photographs is obvious – on days out, on holiday, even just messing around and being silly at home or in the garden.  It’s like I wasn’t there.

I’ve always preferred to be in the background.  Invisible.  As an introvert, that’s just how I’m built.  But there are extremes.  And being completely invisible isn’t necessarily something I want to be any more.  I’m ready to be seen.

My two older girls have cameras.  They go through phases of using them and not using them, and inevitably, if they are in a photographic phase the cameras will be pointed in my direction at some point.  I used to do my usual thing of turning away.  Not any more.  I don’t want to give that message to my girls.  I don’t want them to learn from me how to behave in front of a camera.  I want them to continue their freedom to be natural, to just be themselves, to be so completely unburdened by how they look – I do not want them to be defined by their appearance.

So now if a camera is pointed in my direction I smile, or make a silly face.  It’s not easy, and inwardly I have to force myself not to cringe.  But the more something happens the more it will, so I guess the more photos the girls take of me, the more used to it and comfortable in front of it I will gradually become, until I too can be as happy in front of the camera as I am behind it.

I’d love to know your thoughts around this.  What are you like in front of the camera?  How do you react if someone takes an unexpected candid shot?  What’s your favourite photograph of yourself?