Before I begin this post I need to preface it with a health warning. This is an extremely personal post, one that has sat in my head for months, if not years, that I’m finally allowing some freedom. I’m going to talk about self esteem, body dysmorphia, and I’m not going to censor myself. I am writing this as a stream of consciousness, and there won’t be many photos.

For years I’ve heard to the plea to show up more in my Instagram feed. To be visible in my own marketing. Eventually, I relented and about 4 years ago, I swapped a headshot session with another photographer. We met up in Nottingham and went to cool places, and both bristled at being the other side of the camera. It was fucking torture. Trying to ‘be’ our brands. I have this reaction to stress where I go over the top, and get super enthusiastic, can’t stop talking, can’t relax. Nervous energy. Adrenaline. Everything in me screaming “GET OUT” but something, duty perhaps, rooting me to the spot.

I know it’s normal to hate having your photograph taken. I know it’s normal to not particularly care for how you look in photos, and I know that it can take a few years to accept your appearance in photos (even if you have a daily struggle with the mirror). There’s a bit in Gilmore Girls when Rory’s about to graduate high school and her frenemy Louise demands the yearbook photographer take more portraits of her. When questioned why she states ‘because I’ll never look as good again as I do now.’ What I wouldn’t do for a tenth of that body confidence.

I was a fat kid. Not always, but from the age of about 9 to 15 I was chubby. Eventually I grew into my skin, but by then I’d had years of being teased on the school bus every single day. My year 4 teacher told me I was fat. Whenever I lost even a tiny bit of weight every family friend or older relative commented on it. I knew I was fat, and yet I didn’t know why, or how to stop being that way.

By 6th Form I’d become a ‘normal’ size, but I didn’t really grasp that I’d naturally lost a bit of weight, or just grown. I cut things out of my diet - meat, dairy, wheat - and I started smoking. I lived a very unhealthy lifestyle until I was about 21, when I decided to stay another year at university. It was 2008 and I was absolutely skint, having just started a masters degree and for the first time since I was 17 not having a job. I grew some of my own veg, and started walking everywhere.

The choices I was naturally making were healthy ones, because for the first time in my life they weren’t borne of being on a diet, or wanting to be thin. I had somehow found this equilibrium between calories in vs calories out, and I dropped 20kg in a year without actually realising it. Without any intention or smugness at all, I had found a way to be healthy. And you know what?

I still fucking complained about the size of my thighs

That was fifteen years ago. Since then I have had an incredibly physical job (moving boxes of wine around for 5x10 hour shifts); almost complete physical inactivity; two babies; four stone in weight gain; six months on a high fat, low carb diet before my wedding; several crash diets; and recently, keeping a food diary on my phone. There’s not a new diet you can tell me about, because I know them all. I have ballooned up and shrunk back down, and found neither happiness nor self-acceptance. What I do have is a black hole in where I should be in family photographs and a shredding anxiousness whenever I feel a camera trained upon me. In my world, the most critical gaze isn’t male or female - it is my own.

Why am I telling you about this difficulty with my body image?

Because I know it isn’t just me. I know that I am not the only person who picks over every little detail about themselves in photos, whose eyes naturally shift to their upper arms, who speaks of their chins in multiples, who scours their wardrobe for something to wear day after day and never feels happy in their skin I know this issue isn’t unique to me in the slightest, and that so many of the beautiful people I’ve photographed never consider their appearance to be anything other than a complete disappointment. I know what it is to be on and off diets, to cry when buying clothes, when the mere mention of a dress code makes you feel panicked. I know what it is to feel like you aren’t in control of your body or your appearance, and to aspire to so much more.

The thing is…this is my body. It’s fatter than I’d like it to be, but it can run 5k without stopping. It’s heavier than I’d like it to be, but it cuddles my children. It’s wobblier than I’d like it to be, but it can climb mountains. I know I should focus on those good things, and the rest will follow.

And I know what it’s like to feel all this, and feel sick at having a camera on me. To turn my head in photos, to insist on being in motion, or a silhouette, to want to control the angles at which someone takes a photo of me. To be told to show photos of me doing the things I enjoy, so that people can connect with me - but those photos don’t exist, because I’ve warned everyone off taking them except for the brief moments when I felt fit and strong, and proud of the way I looked.

I’d like to think this all makes me a better, more sympathetic, aware photographer. I try to look out for when my clients aren’t comfortable, and I beg them to let me know if they have any worries. I’m especially sympathetic to new mothers, those who might be most likely to feel like the body they suddenly have isn’t the one they grew up with. There are loads of coping mechanisms up my sleeve to help out my clients, but when I’m the one in front of the camera I feel like a rat in a cage.

When I say I understand, I really mean it.