I’m Just a Girl… Behind the Camera

On self-portraiture, film photography, and being taken seriously in a male-dominated industry….

Sometimes I feel like the hardest part of being a photographer isn’t the camera.

It’s being taken seriously.

Photography is still a very male dominated industry. You notice it pretty quickly once you start paying attention. Who gets hired, who gets recognized, who gets invited into certain spaces, who grows more on social media.

But what’s been even more interesting for me is how often my work gets filtered through the lens of how I look rather than what I create.

Because I shoot a lot of self portraits, people sometimes assume it’s vanity.

Like it’s just another form of taking selfies.

But what most people don’t realize is that creating a self portrait, especially on film, is one of the most difficult forms of photography there is.

There’s no screen to check.

No instant preview.

No chance to correct things in the moment.

You set the frame.

You set the lighting.

You set the focus.

You guess the exposure.

Then you run into the frame and hope everything comes together in that one moment when the shutter clicks.

Sometimes you’re doing this over and over again, adjusting inches at a time, trusting that what you envisioned in your mind will actually exist on the film once it’s developed days later.

It’s technical.

It’s experimental.

And honestly, it’s vulnerable.

Because you’re not just creating the photograph.

You’re stepping inside it.

What people sometimes dismiss as vanity is actually one of the most intricate creative exercises I’ve ever practiced.

You are the photographer.

You are the subject.

You are the lighting assistant, the focus puller, the director, and the editor all at once.

Every single detail is your responsibility.

And yet when a woman is both behind the camera and in front of it, the work often gets reduced to something superficial.

I don’t think that’s because self portraiture isn’t serious art.

I think it’s because historically we’ve been more comfortable seeing women as subjects rather than creators.

But photography has always been more than that.

For me, it’s about experimenting with film and creating things I haven’t seen anyone else do before.

Photography is where I get to try ideas, push boundaries, and explore what’s possible through my camera.

Self-portraiture just happens to be the way I explore that the most.

I’m a very creative person and when I have an idea I HAVE to try to bring it to life.

So yes, sometimes being a woman photographer means people underestimate you.

Sometimes it means your work gets misread before it’s even understood.

But I’ve learned something through all of this.

The art doesn’t become less meaningful just because someone misunderstands it.

If anything, it becomes more important to keep creating.