60. Authentic Expression In Front of the Camera with Lucia Doynel
An Exercise in Self-Confidence
If you’ve been digging through old photos for your marketing and social media for the last year and a half, you’re not alone. Many people haven’t had opportunities to get new photos since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, among the other ways the pandemic has indelibly changed our lives.
But what if you could take great photos with the camera you already have, and you could increase your level of comfort being in front of the camera, your confidence and your skill set?
Taking self-portraits can be daunting, and it can be easy to think you need the best camera and fancy equipment to get it right, but the most important element is you and what lives within you and how you choose to share that with the world.
Lucia Doynel joins India for a conversation about learning to make quality images and why you don’t need expensive gear to take great photos, and building confidence in front of and behind the camera.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:
How Lucia uses Spiritual Psychology tools to help students build confidence in how they show up
Why you should learn to get comfortable with selfies
Why the camera you have is the only camera you need
How Lucia commits to building a body of work through self-compassion
Letting Go of Doubt to Show Up Authentically
Lucia Doynel is a Los Angeles-based, Argentinean-born photographer & educator. She helps people feel comfortable in front of the camera using Spiritual Psychology tools.
Creating a safe space for vulnerability and authentic expression is rooted in honesty and caring. She believes that words are a powerful tool for intention. Accepting our humanness is key to self-empowerment and letting ourselves be visible.
Lucia works closely with how we relate to ourselves as we are being in front of the camera.
She uses multiple Spiritual Psychology tools and techniques to support you in letting go of any challenges that you may feel in the moment, from shyness, to judgments about your appearance, supporting you in letting go of the fears and doubts that are keeping you from authentically showing who you truly are with the world.
Lucia has lived in the US since 2010 and shares her life with her partner and two adorable, trouble-making cats.
A Joyful, Peaceful, Graceful Life
On the Flaunt Your Fire podcast, India asks Lucia Doynel about her background in psychology and how she connects Spiritual Psychology in particular to her photography practice.
Lucia explains that Spiritual Psychology is a holistic approach to psychology that acknowledges that every person’s mind, soul and heart work together. She says the practice of Spiritual Psychology is to recognize that you will have challenges that disturb your peace and that you can heal and find a level of neutrality about the experiences.
“When you look at it as a whole practice, all you’re doing is going back into that place of neutrality, where you can experience a joyful, peaceful, graceful life. And anything that is not that, it’s just merely an opportunity to learn and grow.”
Getting Unstuck with Vulnerability and Authenticity
She continues that many people want to be seen and acknowledged, especially in online spaces, but they get stuck without always even realizing it, coming up against limitations and fears about actually being seen.
But, “if you put that amount of energy into fighting for actually being in cooperation with what you want to do in your life, you would have so much grace and you would actually get a lot done.”
India adds that the ability to redirect that negative, stuck energy into positive action in support of what you really want requires a lot of vulnerability and also authenticity.
Lucia responds that being “fake” publicly is a defense or coping mechanism to protect vulnerability. Fear of rejection or unworthiness makes people do “everything that you have in your capacity to protect that part of yourself…you will come up with something to cover it in order for you to be able to survive. So it's not that you're being fake, you're just surviving.”
She says she feels a lot of compassion for people in that place and recalls that growing up she often used humor to deflect attention and to cope with difficult feelings. She says she had to learn that it was okay to be serious and she chooses not to do “funny bits” on her social media because she doesn’t want to rely on that mechanism and wants to share authentically.
India says that she has definitely noticed a lot of people trying to do those funny bits on Instagram reels, “but is that really who you are? And how can you make something like reels…be your own?”
Lucia adds that she started feeling some FOMO about video content, but brought herself back to her intentional social strategy that honors her capacity as a team of one, rather than chasing trends or making content that doesn’t feel authentic.
Crafting Your Image
India recalls when she was starting to move in a new direction from modeling, she realized that working with the photographers she knew as a model could lead to “putting you back into that box of their opinion, and basically they’re deciding your brand for you.” She began learning Photoshop and photography as a way to take power of the public image she was crafting for herself.
She asks Lucia why it’s so important to her to support people in crafting their own images of themselves and why it’s so important for people to have that skill set for themselves.
Lucia responds that for many of her students, they’re learning to bridge the gap between what they want to create and what they are able to create through training and then through consistent practice.
She says once you develop your practice, you’re able to craft a unique visual aesthetic that people will recognize and remember. “You’re finding your true voice…you are so unique because all the experiences that make you, you and those are the things that you’re bringing to the table.
India agrees and says people can get so caught up in the technical aspects of photography that they “forget that when you are your own photographer, you have the opportunity to decide what you’re showing people in the image.”
Use What You Have
Lucia says emphatically, “the best camera is the camera you have.”
Even though she does have a high-end camera, she says that when inspiration strikes, she has no problem using her phone. Her students often use their phones too and she says even on older models, they’re able to take beautiful, high-quality photos.
“If that’s what you have, use it.”
India adds, “it’s totally not the tool, it’s pausing for a moment and deciding what emotion or what lighting are you seeing with your eyes in front of you that you want to capture.”
Lucia likens that to a project she had while studying Spiritual Psychology that tasked her with tracking moments of wonder. “As a photographer that made me even more aware of tracking the moments of awe in my life.”
Building Self-Confidence
India remembers a self-portrait project she was assigned in college that she says “surprisingly was requiring me and others…to take in the wonder and awe of things about ourselves…And it was a very healing experience for many people. And it also…made them more confident on camera.”
Lucia says “the more you practice taking your own self-portrait, the more you’re able to acknowledge, ‘Oh, this is a great photo.’”
To build that practice, she teaches her students Spiritual Psychology tools to help them relax on camera. “When we’re awkward or when we are kind of like, uncomfortable with that vulnerability, we freeze, we stop breathing,” and that tension and physiological response show up in the photos.
She says if you’re afraid of being seen, the camera will exacerbate that fear and it’s important to have compassion for that part of yourself, but to also ask for its cooperation and to get that part of yourself on board with the project.
“That’s the opportunity for healing and it goes beyond the photo. Like, how would you show up in the world if you felt confident in yourself? How would your life be different? How would your brand be different?”
Making Commitments
India adds that so often photographers end up with very few photos of themselves because they’re always behind the camera. She asks Lucia about actions she takes to create an archive of beautiful, intimate and authentic photos of herself.
Lucia says the most important step is to determine what the actual intention of the photoshoot is, and then she gathers information based on that. From there all of the details of hair, makeup, poses, outfits can come, but the key is knowing what the purpose is.
Once she knows what she wants out of the shoot, she addresses what might be holding her back from actually getting it on the calendar and committing.
“Once you are compassionate toward yourself consciously…it’s about bringing it back to the healing, which is the application of loving the places that hurt.”
How Lucia Flaunts Her Fire:
“Being on this podcast is part of Flaunting My Fire because I struggled a lot with self-judgment around my accent. And now I’m able to use my voice to share without being held back by that judgment that I used to have. So for me, I’m even thinking of launching my own podcast, and so that for me is my next step. But being on other people’s podcasts has allowed me to feel more empowered to do that.”
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