I was approached by the lovely photographer Abigail to be apart of her #ctconfidence series that features 10 South African Bloggers – and involved twisting the usual ‘before’ and ‘after’ norm in any shoot, where the before is a bare skinned shot and the after is a full glammed up shot. Abigail wanted to reverse this so the before becomes the made up face and the after is the bare face.

Being me I am usually up for anything, I think I have this little voice in me that says ‘hey why not’ I especially get this when it comes to going to events if I don’t know anyone going – inside I’m like agh not 100% sure but then the little voice just pushes me to go/do it! This was definitely the case with the shoot I am in no way the most confident person, my skin is flawed it’s discoloured and has scaring knowing this I always feel a lot more confident with a little concealer and mascara on so I definitely knew this shoot would be a challenge.

The idea was to take a long two outfits one that you’d wear out with a full face of make-up and one that you’d wear at home on a Sunday. This was definitely the most exciting part for me as most days I don’t think too much about what I choose to wear and especially not on a sloppy Sunday so it was quite an interesting one for me.

I was lucky enough to have my make up done by Lara Gwynne which definitely made me feel a little more special as I never get my make up professionally done. I did my hair myself and headed off to the studio.

Abigail had set poses, so each blogger had the same pose etc – I didn’t love this so much as when I look at the after pictures I can definitely see in some of them how unnatural I looked and felt whereas some other bloggers looked so comfortable in that pose – I guess this just comes down to the way your body is and how loosey goosey you can be. The shoot itself wasn’t the easiest for me at all and to be honest was a challenge internally. When you get your photograph taken you’re often told to not smile but rather smize – so think of something that makes you happy but show it in your eyes and not your mouth or face, wow what a challenge this is I THINK WAY TOO MUCH! If I’m told to think of something pink/fluffy the facial expression on my face will probably look something like this…

again I think too much! My brain is too literal for airy thoughts – if I need to think of an orange I need to really think about an orange, feel me? So I learn’t 1) I’m no model and 2) My brain needs some structure. Of course I also had in the back of my mind hey I want to look nice now throw all those thoughts into one and well…. mess!

It was then time to take off the make-up, these shots were a lot more smiley and felt a lot more like me although I picked apart the images with my scaring and skin discolouration – I found it easier to choose x5 of the no make-up pictures than the pictures with make-up! Another eye opener, this day was filled with self discovery and really learning things that I wouldn’t know about myself any other way. 

I just want to say one last thing and that is although this shoot was a challenge for me its something I knew I had to do, we should feel as confident wearing a full face of make up as we do without wearing anything. Make up should be fun, a way to accentuate our favourite features instead of mask away all our flaws. I know its easier said than done but we all should try at least to accept ourselves pimples and all!

A big thank you to Abigail for including me in this and allowing me to learn a little more about myself this alone is such a gift!

❤