I am the type of person that still listens to CDs (now, some of you may be asking what is...CD? It's a round disc, smaller than a recor- never mind....) and when I go on roadtrips, I will stop by whatever Wal Mart is in the area, scour the increasingly diminishing racks of CDs and purchase 1 from an artist that I know of, and 1 solely based on the cover art. It's kind of a fun game to see if the feelings evoked by the cover match the music. Anywho, that got me thinking about album covers and photography. Musicians will usually have art that matches their music and their music is a documentation of where they are in their lives/career/etc. therefore the cover art is just a representation of how they felt, existed, were during that moment in their legacy. Here's a collage of T-Swift album covers to give you an example:They are all of her, at different stages of her life, when different things were important to her - we see her go from big floofy princess dresses, to more of a polished vintage look, to dark and gritty, to pastel and glittery. Every album represents a collection of stories/experiences in her life and while you may think that one album is better than another for whatever reason, what you can't do, is deny that it was HERS. Regardless of what other people thought, Taylor decided that this music (and these images) were representative of the NOW (at that time) and worthy of showing the world. It's not good or bad, it's just a memory to live on.If we can start to look at photos of ourselves in the same way: each photo just being a documentation of who you were/what you were going through/how you were existing/what was important to you etc. and recognizing it as a marker on path to you evolving as a human, INSTEAD of hating what you see, I think you will enjoy our photographic experience more. If we could see our life experiences as just that - experiences - that hold no moral value of good or bad, perhaps we would shed some of the shame we feel around certain parts of our life story. Now, of course there are people out there who do things and hold no remorse, but if you have shame, chances are you have remorse about something you have or have not done in your life.But let's get back to this idea that IF you focused on the now. If you didn't wait until you lost 50 lbs before having a photo taken and IF you didn't wait until you have a significant other and IF you didn't wait until your tan lines disappear and you had your album cover photographed today - What would it look like? How would you want to be portrayed at this point in your life? Don't think about who you've been in the past or how you will be viewed in the future - who are you RIGHT NOW? What would you wear? nothing, a latex jumpsuit, a fur coat with bedazzled panties, a turtleneck and high waisted jeans, a vintage gown? What location would you be in? Would it just be you and a white wall? Against a wall of neon lights? Lying down in a bed of flowers? Perhaps coming out of a river? Lying on a bed of satin sheets? What would your makeup look like?How would your hair be styled? How would it be lit? What colors would be important to you?THIS is how I want you to prepare for your session with me (if traditional boudoir is not what you are looking for). The beauty of EMPOWERMENT PHOTOGRAPHY is that it can be anything and everything we want it to be as long as the end result is YOU, feeling empowered. You feeling like you've just released an album that represents a part of your life that will help you leave a legacy of who you were. This means going beyond JUST looking sexy and hot (though we can do that too!), it can be about showing your feminine side (regardless of your gender), it can be channeling your sadness and grief into emotive, raw images that translate the pain, or it can be celebrating your feminist rage at the patriarchy! Like, how awesome would it be to find images of your relatively conservative grandmother protesting the war and living out of a van in the 60s? All of a sudden, she becomes a much more rounded human. How cool will it be for future generations to see photos of you and know exactly what you were feeling/doing/living your life as? It just gets me so excited!The thing is, you ARE going to change. You ARE going to grow, adapt, move, shift, change shape and size, go through hardships, go through celebrations, experience loss, experience love, experience every little thing that makes up the human condition - EVERY stage of it has beauty, EVERY stage of it is worthy of being photographed, because YOU, my dear, are worthy of being photographed. So, I will ask you: What will your album cover look like?
