Two weeks ago when I was at Coachella, I had a serious moment of realization. It seemed like every turn I took, all I saw were people in the midst of trying to capture “the coolest pic” to prove on social media that they were at #Coachella…me guiltily amongst that crowd. And as I’m the first to say how much I love taking pictures on a personal level & even feel fortunate that I get to do it as a job, it made me stop to ask myself, “Is this really what our world has come to? To live behind a lens instead of living IN a moment–all for just some social applause?”
This image that became an iconic one everyone posted that weekend that said “I was at Coachella so I’m gonna stand in front of the ferris wheel to make sure you knew I was here” was actually probably one of my most favorite pictures I took. Yet, what you wouldn’t know just by looking at this was that I had just dealt with the most annoying 45-min parking lot mess that made me miss a singer I was dying to see, on top of being completely sick.
Someone once told me that there are two Laineys: the “Blogger Lainey” & the “Normal Lainey” which are similar, but “Normal Lainey” is way more real—a comment I think about all the time. And upon having this general social media reevaluation, I started sifting through my own recent pictures asking myself, “Where WAS ‘Normal Lainey’?”– it seemed like she’s become lost in the mix of “Blogger Lainey”. It was then I started to feel like I’ve been doing an injustice lately, mainly to myself, of hiding “Normal Lainey”. Yet honestly, she might be cooler than “Blogger Lainey”.
Life is not always rainbows and unicorns, but through this social media world we now live in, we’ve been able to portray to others whatever we want to show, covering all the UNglamorous moments that go behind each cool picture we post.
So in my attempts to remind myself, & maybe some of you, that there are real stories (& people) behind every great photo, I created this YouTube series called #FashionlaineFridays sharing some of my own real moments. This week is all about MY Coachella including my 2ND ENCOUNTER with my fashion idol of life Nicole Richie!
Click for the first video below, I hope you guys enjoy this series as much as I do! #AllowMeToReintroduceMyself
