IPhone Only — Lady Out Loud

| No DSLR this time.

Happy Monday, Loud Livers! As is our Monday tradition here on Lady Out Loud, we celebrate our true selves, without the veil of makeup in the form of No Makeup Monday. It gives us a chance to be free outside of the social pressures of looking airbrushed and perfect in your favorite concealer, and basking in the beauty of being you! The natural look is coming back, and I’m all here for it!

Speaking of perfection...I’m sure you have noticed that everyone is living a seemingly perfect life on social media. “Casually” walking through the streets of NYC, wind perfectly blowing their hair and voluminous skirts, hands on their hat keeping it from flying away in the rich blue sky. Like Bruno Mars in my last post, that artwork is meant to make you feel good! Give you something to aspire to and bring a bit of light. I’m all for it! Who doesn’t want to be uplifted and gaze at images of fantasy regularly, even just to take you out of your day for a moment? Those images are often captured and created by professionals whose creative eye, expensive equipment and learned editing skills produce the entrancing work you see. A DSLR or mirrorless camera body, 2-3 prime and telephoto lenses, countless memory cards, then all of the editing software (and a powerful, compatible computer to work and store them). They give the illusion of perfection with the closing of a shutter and 45 seconds in Lightroom. But what if you don’t have all of that equipment?

I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t matter. Let’s take something almost all of us have...the iPhone. If you don’t have an iPhone, I’m sure an equivalent Samsung or smartphone device sits in your hands or on the table next to you while you read this. They may be common, but that one tool will capture a real moment in true color. No retouching, elaborate editing necessary. There is beauty in raw, grainy.

In the same way, we should work with what we have! Your body, family, scars, past...to a certain extent, we can change none of those things. So rather than draining our savings and stressing ourselves to achieve this fabricated idealism, we should celebrate and work with exactly what we have been given! There is absolutely nothing wrong with your added scars, imperfect skin and flyaways. The realness is you.

And you are beautiful, unretouched and raw.

Love Loudly. Live Loudly.

Jenn