The Downside To Shooting Your Lover
Shooting with a camera I mean. It’s pretty self evident the downside to shooting your lover in other ways, however tempting it might be at times. Anyway, this is something I realized after my last relationship ended earlier this year:
It’s pretty normal to get rose coloured glasses after a breakup. You’re thinking about how much you’ve lost and all that shit, and trying to outwardly reflect how you feel on the inside. It always seems like you’ve lost more than you’ve gained from the break up, whether that’s true or not. That’s the thing that kicks you in the balls, you temporarily forget all the fighting and bitterness and everything you hated about them, and only remember what you loved about them. I guess it helps maximize your heartbreak and potential to write bad emo poetry.
But as a photographer I had literal rose coloured glasses after me and Jackie (my last girlfriend) broke up – all the pictures and movies I’d taken over the course of our relationship.
In her case, over 4,000 pictures and movies. And being me, there were of course tons of sexy pictures, and all sorts of naughty things. Which rocked at the time, but after breaking up with her it really came back to bite me in the emotional ass, because I was left with all these pictures of her looking great. Like, fantastic. She was pretty good looking in real life, but because I’m a half decent photographer, the pictures made her ridiculously good looking, as Zoolander would say.
So there I was, newly heartbroken and sitting around with nothing to do and a harddrive full of stunning pictures of my ex that made her look more attractive than any girl ever should. I could go back and see the sex I wouldn’t be getting anymore, the body I wouldn’t be seeing anymore. Because I took the pictures, the focus was on everything I liked about her, and nothing I disliked. It’s like having 4,000 pictures of your perfect fantasy girl, emotionally linked to the girl you just broke up with in real life. My brain didn’t understand that the girl in the pictures was a fantasy that never existed, it just saw Jackie and remembered that we broke up.
Harsh, eh?
As an artsy type, it’s an even more complicated ball of emo. Because not only do the pictures tug on the ol’ heartstrings due to the subject matter, they also bother me because some of them are really good. I want to put them on my website, show them to people, do something with them. It’s incredibly hard to just sit on material this good. One of the best pictures I’ve ever taken is one I will probably never be able to show anyone. It looks like a Rembrandt painting, it’s one of those rare photographic occurrences where everything just clicked perfectly and the picture took on something much more than what it actually was. And it was already my most favorite thing ever (a hot naked redhead). But that picture will never see the light of day… Boo hoo, I know. But it really does suck. I might never again take a picture as good as the one that I can’t show anyone.
So all the great pictures sit around collecting dust, and the only pictures of her I ever put anywhere are crap snapshots and nothing of photographic merit. Which reminds me of another thing that’s a big kick in the junk – I’m left with a bunch of pictures which I still have the legal right to use, but it just feels…funky…thinking about it. There’s something inherently disturbing about putting pictures of your ex girlfriend on your website, or portfolio, or blog. It just feels dirty and wrong.
Maybe I should investigate a combo pre-nup and model release for the future… Oh well, I’ll deal with that when I get there.
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The Author:
Damien Laliberte lives his life between the lines. A photographer, writer, guitarist, popper, and a boorish opiner; He keeps eccentric hours and is oft seen scurrying off to bed immediately after daybreak, periodically stopping to scan the horizon for any sign of Dom DeLuise (To make sure he hasn't accidentally been transported back in time to the 1970's).
