To understand me, you have to understand that I have been influenced, inspired, and impacted by an incredibly large, and random spectrum of people and experiences, a combination so perfectly purposeful that some may call it luck, but I call it divine. One particular person, a dear friend of mine, was recently in a high profile photo shoot for a major brand. I have since seen her images everywhere, and the pictures are well, perfect. It’s the type of magazine or commercial photo that you wish you could have of yourself, but you know simply isn’t able to be captured, because, well, you’ve tried.
The other day I mentioned to my friend just how wonderful her ads were and how amazing she looked, and I asked how many hours it took to capture that “perfection.” She let me in a secret. It didn’t take hours. No, the shoot took days. Long days. 5am-11pm days. Three of them. And the next thing she told me rocked my understanding of photoshop and edited images even more: the photographers took 80,000 pictures over those three days. 80,000. There were three models being photographed, so approximately 27,000 pictures each. Out of 27,000 pictures, came a final product of six perfect pictures of my friend. That’s one picture out of every 4,500 taken that made it to print.
Feel better about your own pictures yet? I know I do.
Remember that perfection is not real, and that the images that inundate our lives are not only masterfully edited and photoshopped, but they are also precisely picked through by professionals, taking more hours than we could possibly imagine to convey “effortless perfection.” Perfection is not effortless and it never can be because perfection, as defined by society and media, is an impossibility.
Be real. Be yourself. Be imperfect.