Vulnerable

​To love is to be vulnerable. 
― C.S. Lewis

It looks like I have a scar on my thigh. I don't. I assume that's a crinkle from the sheets I was lying on earlier? or something? I considered photoshopping it out or filtering it to make it look less visible but then I figured I'd just leave it. In the interests of the authenticity of the moment perhaps...

This picture-taking project is interesting for that reason. It requires a lot of physical preparation to avoid panty lines or bra strap lines or weird crinkles and sometimes things show up on the pictures that I didn't expect. And while I'm trying to take pictures that appeal to an audience, I'm also trying to document what I look like and where I am so then I have to decide how much truth is just enough truth in a given picture.

However, I'm finding a disconnect between the body I photograph and the body that lives and walks and breathes in the real world. I'll catch a glimpse of myself in a shop window while I'm out and about and I double take. I'm so used to seeing my body in bits and pieces, in close ups and very specifically framed that it's startling to see myself in full,

Oddly, that's where the real vulnerability comes in, Not in the pictures I take, over which I have absolute editorial control, but in the pictures other people take or the candid glimpses I catch of myself in my normal life. 

For me real life views are the true vulnerability. And learning to love that body? I'm still working on it.