It’s scary…believe me, I know. You are working on a photograph (or really any project you love) you step back to look at the finished result and smile. It looks good, your happy with the result, YOU like it!

But now comes the scary part. And this part can be so terrifying to some that they end up just pushing their work aside. Leaving it hidden for no one to ever see. They wonder, will other people like it? Will clients love it? Will other photographers? The general public? It’s a whole lot of unknown before you share your photographs. You post your proud photo and wait. Do you here crickets, cries of joy or something you weren’t prepared for….

Well, several years ago I found myself in that “something you weren’t prepared for” category.

I had completed a personal photo project with my oldest daughter who was only 3 or 4 years old at the time. I had displayed my project on my blog, Facebook and Instagram and gotten great feedback from my peers, friends and family. One of the photos from the project had even gone somewhat viral on Pinterest and that made me feel pretty happy!

Then, several months later, I started to get texts and FB messages just blowing up my phone …

from clients and friends who had seen my photo shared on a really big mommy blog (at the time there were over 2 million FB followers to this page)! Not only that, but my photo was the main one on their Facebook post about the article. Cool! I was pumped. What cool exposure! I started reading all kinds of uplifting and positive comments from people who viewed the post.

But then it got ugly…and fast.

As I checked in later in the evening, there were thousands of comments on my work! However, many of the comments had spiraled into a different approach. A much darker and crueler take on my photo. The photo I had worked hard on, was proud of, loved for personal reasons as well as artistic. It was one of my biggest fears as an artist multiplied by a thousand.

The comments not only bashed my work, but me as a photographer, and then worse.. as a mother.

Now throughout these nasty remarks, there were still positive, awesome comments coming in singing my praises. But that didn’t matter to me any more. All I could do was focus in on the negative and it made me feel bad. Really bad. I wondered if I should take down that photo from my site or ask the blog to remove it. I felt like I didn’t want to share any of my work…ever… again. But I didn’t do that.

Here’s what I did instead.

The next day I posted my most recent work on my blog…and on Facebook and Instagram. I kept sharing and showing people what I’ve got.  I kept taking pictures, kept on creating ideas to photograph. I kept sharing my love for photography. I kept posting work that I was proud of and wanted future clients to see. I posted work to hopefully inspire others. I stopped reading all the negative and hurtful comments and kept right on doing what I love. I choose to ignore the internet trolls and focus on the positive.

Because at the end of the day, if you love what you’ve created…

you shouldn’t worry if someone tells you if your photo is not cropped right or is too bright, overdone, tacky, ugly, blah blah, negative, negative, blah…. Be proud of what you’ve created and share it with a smile!

With each photo I post, even now, I get a little anxiety about how it will be viewed.

I think it’s normal to feel that way. I’m sure you feel that way too. But if you want people to see what you can produce, if you want to show clients what you can do for them, if you want to inspire others or if you just want to share with the world what you’re proud of… then do it! Keep going, keep moving forward and smile when you do!

And just as a reminder too, remember that there is a real person behind every image or blog post you see online. They are working hard at doing what they love just like you.

If your curious to see my photo that got the good and bad attention. It’s right here.

And the rest of the photos from this session you can see right here…but please no negativity;)

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