Intro: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Posers podcast, the place where we skip the fluff. Say the quiet parts out loud and dig into what really matters. This is where photography, psychology, and business collide. I'm Jody, your host, and I'm bringing you my raw takes, hard wins, and a whole lot of unfiltered honesty about what it takes to build a photography business that actually connects and makes money.
So ladies, grab your headphones and get your tits up and your ears open because we are going to build something really incredible together.
Jodi: Hello, hello, hello, my beautiful posers, and welcome back to another episode of the Posers Podcast.
Today's
episode is
a
little bit different.
It's
not a strategy episode, it's not a marketing episode. And honestly, I need
to give you
a
little
bit of
a heads-up before we even get into this one, because we're gonna go
somewhere [00:01:00]
deeper
than business today.
And
this episode actually touches a little bit on body image. Don't ask me how I managed to bring photography back to a topic like body image, but I did it. And, some of it might sit too close to home for some of you.
I
have a
master's
degree
in psychology,
but
I'm not a
therapist, and nothing
I say today
is meant
to
replace any sort of professional
support.
So
if
you need to pause
this
or sit with this or
skip it, altogether, that's okay too,
because obviously
I wanna
give this little
bit of disclaimer so that you can make
the decision
to
take
care of
yourself,
obviously. but if you're ready,
This episode's a little bit more like a
heavy conversation
with
a really close
friend.
[00:02:00] So I want you to
think
back
to
growing up, like
middle school
years,
maybe high
school years, maybe even college years, that
era.
And
I want you to think
of, one
specific girl. Maybe
she's your best friend, maybe
she
sat next
to you in one of
your classes, maybe
she
was your sister. But this specific friend was stunning.
Like, objectively,
undeniably
beautiful, obvious.
Everybody
could
see it.
Strangers
could see it.
Teachers saw it,
boys
saw it, other girls
saw it and felt that pang of like jealousy of something that
they
didn't have that they wanted,
okay?
I
know that we all have this girl in our lives, or
some of us might even be
this girl in
our lives.
But-
for me, this was one of my very best
friends, and the [00:03:00] way that the room would light up whenever she entered was something that honestly
should be studied. I've always been very acutely aware of, like, how insanely gorgeous women are, and to the point that my husband would tell you that there's been many times in our marriage that he has questioned if I should be married to a woman.
And I tell him, "Do not get comfortable, because the answer is yes." It is always
a
resounding yes.
I love to photograph women. I love
the angles of
women. I love how stunning women are. And being a woman's woman is literally one of my favorite
parts of running this business.
so
back then, obviously,
it
would
pain me to see my friend in the
light
that
I saw her in and the light that others saw her in, and to know that she didn't see [00:04:00] herself in that same way.
Everyone,
everyone literally saw
it except
for her. And it
wasn't
just her looks either.
She
was
hysterically funny.
She is hysterically funny. Um, she went off to get multiple degrees. She lived abroad. She had her whole entire career and, like, life path nailed down before She got married,
and
then spent years living this really
incredible life
with an
amazing husband before she decided to have a couple of kids.
So she literally
she
gets
everything right.
She,
she makes no mistakes literally her entire life. I'm like, "No notes, girl. Like, you've got it." But she also,
this same girl, lost so much weight our junior year in high school that
jeans that would
have
fit her snugly
the year before
would
literally
fall off of her hip bones.
She couldn't keep them on.
She [00:05:00] would
stand in front of the mirror...
Ooh
I didn't think
that that would make me
emotional saying that
But here we
are
She
would
stand in
front
of the mirror
and she
would see something
that none of the rest of us could see. She'd point at her stomach, she'd say that she needed to lose weight.
She'd point at her face and,
like, find literally
the one
flaw
that the rest of
us would
have
never noticed.
She'd put
herself down
in that,
like,
really
quiet
but almost,
like, automatic
way. the things
that she was
saying
about herself felt so automatic
for
her
that she just assumed that it was, like, understood by everyone.
Like,
the
sky
is blue and she's not good enough
Those were both facts for her
and
obviously we would tell
her, we'd
tell her
constantly that
she's
gorgeous.
We did all of the "
like, What are you talking
about?" Like, "Stop [00:06:00] it." Like, we did all of that,
like, talk that
we were
supposed to do as
her girlfriends.
And
usually She'd just brush it off. She
would
make a joke about
it. She would
laugh. She would,
like, go about her
day. But here's the part that haunts me whenever
I
think
back
on it now
as an adult.
It wasn't that
she
didn't have evidence. She had piles of evidence. She had a mirror full
of
evidence.
She had rooms full
of
people telling
her
the truth.
She had boys tripping
over themselves to
ask her out.
The evidence
was never the
problem.
Her eyes
were showing
her something that
simply was not
there, and
no amount of
proof
from the outside world could override what
she
believed
on the inside.
I'm telling you this story because I think
almost every single one of you listening right now had [00:07:00] a version
of her in your life,
and
I bet some of you
had a
version of her
looking back
at you
in your
own
mirror.
But I'm also telling you this story because it is the
exact
same
thing that is happening to so many of you in your business, too. All right, so let me tell you about where
this all came from and
why
this is in my head.
I had
a
conversation
a couple weeks back,
and obviously I
was
in my DMs. That's where I always
am. That's
where I talk to all
of
you.
But I
was in my
DMs, and a photographer
reached out
and asked
me
about my
presets, where I had
bought them,
what I
used, you
know, the, the whole gamut of
questions that come along with a preset.
And
I told her that I didn't buy them. I told her that I made them
myself, and I made
them
probably a
decade ago.
Um, uh, she
also asked
whether or
not
I
sell them. I "
said, No, I
don't sell
them. I am not techy enough [00:08:00] to figure out how
to
even do that."
So
she asked
for a
little bit of guidance
on
what
to do
instead because
she couldn't
buy my presets,
and
I told her what I tell everyone because I thought it was just going to be this very easy conversation that
her and I had.
I said,
uh, "Go buy
a preset
that you like, genuinely love,
but know
this
one thing going in. Know
that there is no
one-click-and-it's-perfect
button. There's not a preset that
is out there that you are just going
to give it
one click, and
it's just
all of the sudden the perfect edit that you've ever seen in your life.
That just doesn't exist.
So you buy the
preset
pack
that you
love,
and then you tweak it,
and
you hone
it, and
you build from there
until it actually
reflects
what you want
your work
to look like. and then
you save a few versions of it for the lighting situations that you shoot
in the
most.
And then
the [00:09:00] most important part for the preset is that once you dial all that in and once you hone it
to have the look that you
want
it
to have,
then you have to put
it down,
and then you have to walk away from it,
and you have to leave it
alone
So we
had that
whole entire
conversation in the DMs. But
then
she came back and
told me something that
kind of
stopped me
in
my tracks.
She said
that
she has bought
hundreds of presets over the
last 10 years.
Hundreds.
And
nothing, none of those hundreds
of presets
had ever been what
she wanted them to be for her. And
my first
response back
was just
kind of
validating on
my side.
I said,
"Yeah, like,
that actually
proves
my
point.
There
is
never
a one-click
answer. You have to do the work. You
have to, like,
take the
one preset, hone it,
like, tweak it, make it yours," right?
But
then
[00:10:00] something
deeper hit a little bit,
and
I reread her
response,
and then
I clicked over
into
her profile. And sure
enough,
I
saw
exactly
what
I
thought
that I was gonna see
because
her editing was absolutely immaculate.
Absolutely
stunning. Literally
no
notes,
creamy skin tones,
crushed
blacks, dreamy,
luminous, gorgeously cohesive. And
That's where I knew that I needed
to, like,
slow down
because I
wanted
to have
a deeper
conversation
with her.
And this right here is
actually
the heart of
this whole entire
episode. So
I
didn't
tell her my theory
right away.
I
kind of asked some clarifying
questions
first because I genuinely
wanted to know what was going
on underneath all
of this.
And I asked
her,
I said, "Do you think that
changing
your mind [00:11:00] so many
times on
what
kind of an edit that you love, that, that sort of bouncing back
and forth,
oscillating
thoughts,
going back and forth
in your head about
editing..."
I asked
her whether or not
they
were leaving her in this place of never deciding just because the edit was actually not what she
loved,
or was
it a little bit deeper, And
was it maybe a confidence
issue where the
tinkering is
actually keeping her safe? because
as long
as she's tinkering,
she
doesn't have
to
sort of admit that like, "Okay,
like, my photos
are
gorgeous.
My,
my
craft is
honed, and now it's time for me to
leave this.
thing that
makes me feel so
comfortable.
And
now I have
to step away,
and now I have to build the harder
[00:12:00] parts
of the business."
And I said to
her that maybe she needed
to take some
time
and
figure out
if this is really a
preset
issue or
if this
is a confidence
issue.
And I told her that it didn't sound like a technical issue or
a coloring issue
to me
because her edits were so stunning. So then
me
being me,
of
course,
because I
can't
help
myself,
I
held up a
mirror
a little
bit
more
because
if
there's
one
flaw that I have,
it is
this.
My biggest flaw is that I care
more
about each one
of your
businesses
than I care
about
your
temporary "
comfort
or your temporary
discomfort.
So I told her that
her edits look great, and that it's really important
for her to
not
only stop wasting
her time
and her money on more [00:13:00] presets,
but to
also stop playing with
the pretty,
And
that it was time to roll up her sleeves and work on the parts of her business that actually need her. Because
editing
was not it.
Editing was not needed. That was
not the constraint in her business. And obviously, I followed it up with a little bit of like,
you know, a kissy face emoji, because I wanted her to know that I said it
with love,
because I'm not a sociopath,
you guys.
But You know what happened after that, which I was
actually, like, so
proud of her for
and so
happy
that
we got to have
this conversation, because she
came
back
with something
that
was
so honest
and so
transparent.
And she said, "Yeah,
I
get
it.
I
think
if I feel confident in my
edits,
I
can actually... I would, I would actually
have to tackle the other
things that I need
to
do. So
instead, [00:14:00]
I
let
myself
stay in
a place where I'm
unsure because that feels
safer." And she said, "I'm
spending
so much
time getting my photos to look a certain way and fixing color issues,
and I'm still not
happy with
the outcome.
So
then I tell myself that I can't focus on the
other parts of my
business
until I
get this part of it right."
So she named the problem herself, and she was really vulnerable and really transparent with me, which I absolutely loved.
And,
uh,
she said that the editing
was
the excuse that, she was
letting
stand between her
and
the
things
in her business that
genuinely scared her
so
I said, "Yeah,
like, you've got it. That's exactly what I'm
saying. You're looking at
this like it's
an editing problem,
but it's deeper
than that. The
tinkering
is a
symptom of a
bigger problem here."
And then I
gave
her an example
that I think
makes this
click for most
of us.
And I said, it's
[00:15:00] like whenever you
lash
out at a friend,
and
then you just say, like, "Oh my God,
I'm
so sorry," "
like, I'm
tired," or, "I'm
cranky," or, "I'm hungry," and that that's the
reason
that you
lashed out
at
them. But
really, it's
because they said
something that brushed
up against,
like,
a
much deeper wound.
and
being tired or
being hungry or being cranky, like, that's just the easier, more acceptable
explanation.
The tinkering works the
same way. It happens because of self-doubt, because of
perfectionism, which
we all know, 'cause I've said it a
million times, is really just a symptom of self-sabotage.
Um, or
it can maybe even be a
self-worth
sort of
issue. And
it keeps
you
comfortable
to call it
this
editing problem, because an editing problem is so
much easier
to live with than the
truth
that's underneath
it
And then,
of course, 'cause
I don't
stop there,
my brain went off
[00:16:00] into
this
love of all
things psychology that I have.
and
I said, "
This
is literally
like
body dysmorphic disorder in your business."
Just
like
a person
with
body dysmorphic disorder looks in the mirror and
sees fat where nobody
else can see it, because
the fat
literally
actually doesn't exist. It's their brain lying to them
and tricking them and showing them something
that
isn't there.
But you cannot convince
them of the fact
that
it's
not there, because
that is their truth. That is genuinely what they
are
seeing, because
their brain is
lying to them.
The
same situation is happening here.
People see your photos, and they can tell you until they're blue in the face
that
your
photos are gorgeous, that your photos are stunning. Or you can
read the
barrage
of comments that
are left on a post
where
tons
of people are saying how gorgeous the photos are. But your brain
won't
let
you see it.
Your brain
[00:17:00] shows you
where
skin tones aren't
balanced.
Your brain
tells you that your eyes-
Need
to
zero in
on the
greens that are teetering
on being too
neon, or any of the
other imperfections
that your
brain
is
seeing.
and
the bigger problem isn't actually your
editing, it's the story that your brain is telling you about
what you see.
So if you think back to that girl, the one
that we
were talking about
before,
our best friends or our sister, whoever, the one who can look
in the
mirror
and
see something
that
isn't really there. If
you tried to fix
what
she
was seeing
by handing her a different mirror,
then it wouldn't work.
If you tried to fix it with, say,
better lighting or
a
different outfit, it
wouldn't work.
If you
tried to fix it by
telling her, like, one more time just how beautiful
she
is,
maybe it'll
help for a minute, But
it would not fix the actual problem,
because
the
problem
was never [00:18:00] in the mirror. the problem was never in the lighting. The problem was in how her brain is
interpreting
what she
sees. So until that part gets
addressed, she can change mirrors
1,000 times, and she will still see the same distorted reflection looking back at her because the call
is coming
from inside the building,
EPISODE 70: right?
IMG_1423: Now, like overlay
that
onto editing or
really
any part
of your business that you're letting yourself hide behind.
If you have spent
years buying preset
after preset
or tweaking
and adjusting and still feeling like nothing is ever quite right,
I
just want you
to hear me that- The presets are
not the problem.
The presets have never been the problem. You can buy
a thousand more and the feeling
will
not change
because you
are not
actually
looking for the right preset.
You are
looking
for
the
permission
to feel like your work
is
[00:19:00] enough.
The that tweaking, it's that,
like,
that
endless
hunting
for the perfect edit, that is
simply
a mask.
It's something to kinda
keep your hands
busy
and your
mind occupied
so that
you don't
have
to sit with the
much
scarier
question underneath it, which is, "Am I
actually good enough to run this
business? What
if
I let go
of this tinkering and work
on something
that scares
the shit out of me,
and then I
fail?" It's easier to say that I
didn't try
than it feels to say
that I
tried
and
I
failed at it.
These things that we hide behind,
they aren't the issue. They're just simply the symptom.
And as long as you're still tweaking, you never actually
have to finish. And if you never
finish,
by
finish, I mean, like, getting the photos right Okay?
And
if you never
finish, if you never get the photos right,
then
you never [00:20:00] have
to face whether or
not
it was ever good enough, and The, editing becomes this thing that's really standing in between you
and that real fear.
I wanna be really careful because I
don't obviously want to say this lightly. There's a pattern underneath all of
this, the refusal to trust your
own eyes,
the endless search
for something that's outside
of
yourself
to fix
a feeling
that lives inside of
yourself.
And
that pattern shows up in so many corners of a woman's life, not just,
like, inside of
Lightroom for us. We are
so hard on
ourselves as
women
as
women,
we carry a kind of
harshness
towards ourselves that we would never
in a
million
years dream of pointing at someone that we love.
We
pick
ourselves apart in mirrors, we pick ourself apart [00:21:00] in photos, we pick
ourselves apart
in the quiet moments that literally nobody else ever sees. And sometimes that harshness
settles somewhere and we lose
control of
it.
Sometimes it settles
into
a
relationship
with food
or our relationship
with our
own bodies, or where
the evidence
in front
of us stops
mattering
Because the belief underneath
has taken over
completely. And I wanna speak to
that with real,
like genuine care, because
if that's part of your story,
please know
that
I am not
comparing
your
experience to a
preset
pack.
Okay?
I would never
minimize
that
What I am saying is that the same root is often growing underneath
both of those things. The same refusal to believe how good you really
[00:22:00] are at this thing called
photography,
the same exhausting
search for an external
fix to an internal wound, they live in the same part of
us as women.
That harshness and that mindset doesn't stay contained
to the
mirror. It doesn't stay contained to your body or your plate or your
reflection.
It finds other rooms in your life to live in, and one of the rooms it loves the
most is your
business
because
then it
can show up really disguised.
It shows up disguised
as
perfectionism,
as high standards,
as
a
strong work ethic.
It tells you
that it's just,
you
know,
helping you do it
really well.
It
tells you
that
it's just
making sure
that
you measure
up to all
of those who
are
around you.
It's making
sure that you're liked by others. It looks
so
reasonable on the outside that you'd never
[00:23:00] think to question
it,
and that's
exactly
what makes it
so dangerous. It's a
wolf in
sheep's clothing. It walks into your business wearing this costume of perfectionism, and
then
perfectionism
gets praised in our culture. So nobody
stops to ask,
like, what are you actually guarding?
So- If you notice yourself endlessly
tweaking a gallery, endlessly chasing a preset,
endlessly finding
one more
flaw in your work or something else in your
business
that
everyone else
tells
you that you're great
at, or
everyone else
says, "Oh my God, your
work is so beautiful,"
I
want you to pause
and
I
want
you
to ask yourself that like really gentle
question, is this actually about skin tones, or is this
the same
old wolf wearing a sheep's costume trying to convince
you that
something is wrong
with your
work [00:24:00] that other people genuinely
cannot see?
All right. let's bring this back to your business because this isn't just a mental
health tangent. this is also costing you real time and real money.
And if you're still hunting for the perfect preset
after 10 years, you are spending hours every
single day, every single week that you will never
get
back.
Hours that you could
be spending marketing your business, building
relationships, actually
shooting, or
actually living
your life
too. And the cruelest part is that it really feels like you're
working
on your craft.
It feels
like you're working on the
right assignment. But
if it's been years and you still don't
trust
your
own
eye,
the work was never going to be inside of
another
preset
pack
I'm not gonna sit here and
pretend
[00:25:00] that,
you know, one
podcast
episode rewires a lifetime of
self-doubt.
That's obviously
not
how this works, and I'd be
lying to you
if
I said
otherwise.
But
I can tell you
where
the
shift starts
to happen. It starts with separating the
question that you're
actually asking.
Instead
of
asking
what
preset will make
this perfect,
start asking,
"What
am I
afraid will happen
if
I just
decide
that this
edit right here in front of me is good enough and move on?"
And sit with
that question.
Really sit with that question. For a lot of you, the honest
answer underneath is something
like
"I'm afraid someone will see my work and realize
that
I'm not as good as they think I
am."
And that fear, that's the
real subject. And once you can name that fear, you can actually start
working on
it directly instead of
kind of
[00:26:00] laundering it through your editing or whatever else in your business that you can hide behind for,
I don't know, another decade. and another question that I really wanna leave you with today, because
I
don't
think that
any of these questions are really
mine to answer, uh, I just want you to sit with them and for you to think, and I want you to ask yourself, can you ever actually build
the business that
you crave,
the one that you can
see so
clearly in
your head,
if these thoughts are still
running the show underneath it all?
And I
don't
know,
that answer,
That's not
for
me to answer
for you. But I think it's worth asking,
and I think it's worth really getting
an honest
answer.
You know,
whenever we were girls-
I wonder
sometimes what would've happened
if someone
had told us gently that [00:27:00] the mirror wasn't lying
to us, but our brain was.
Not in a way that
blamed us,
just in a
way that
at least
named it so, so that we could've grown
up telling
ourselves a different, story.
Like, if we
had had that
whenever
we were
little girls,
what would we have built
by
now?
What would we have already accomplished? What would we have
already done? Or how differently would we feel about ourselves at this point in our
lives
I think we owe it to ourselves to
find out
Okay. That's it for today, my beautiful posers. This one was a little different,
a little
more personal,
but I
think sometimes,
especially
in this world, we
need a lot more of these personal moments. if anything
in this episode
stirred up some
heavier
topics [00:28:00] than
obviously just editing for you, then please don't carry
that alone
Talk
to someone that
you trust or a professional who can
help you through it.
Next week, we will get back to business.
Bye for now,
posers
Outro: Okay, so that is a wrap on this episode of the Posers Podcast. If you loved it, please subscribe, rate, and review because honestly, algorithms are needier than all of our ex-boyfriends combined. And ladies, I need all the help I can get. If you've got thoughts, questions, love letters, even hate mail, please send them my way.
I actually read every single one of them. So until next time, stapled, stay messy and don't let the bullshit win. Tits up. Ears open and go build something. Incredible. Bye for now, friends.
