These Side-By-Side Photos Reveal The Truth About Professional Photoshoots

Body-positive blogger Megan Jayne Crabbe (a.k.a. @bodyposipanda) is no stranger to having her photo taken — and that's why she's opening up about what exactly goes into a professional photoshoot, or the photos that we've been conditioned to compare ourselves to.

Crabbe recently took part in a lingerie photoshoot with an unconventional approach: After the shoot, the photographer asked her to go home and recreate the shots herself, with no makeup and relaxed poses. Crabbe then posted two side-by-side images to her Instagram, one from the professional shoot, and one she had taken herself, in the same set of lingerie.

"REAL TALK: the photo on the left is staged as hell," she wrote in her caption. "I was told where to put my legs, how to angle my arm, which way to tilt my hips and even how to hold my fingers. My eyes were watering from the false lashes and my hair will probably never look like that again."

"THESE ARE THE TYPE OF IMAGES WE COMPARE OURSELVES TO EVERYDAY!" she added. "A posed, polished, perfectly lit snapshot of the highlight reel."

This photoshoot, however, was a little different.

"After all the typically 'flattering' lingerie posing, @curvykate asked me to go home and recreate the pictures make-up free, hair undone and relaxed," she wrote. "Because behind-the-scenes deserves to be celebrated too! Our bodies are glorious from every angle. Posed or unposed. Polished or not. "

While we know that what you see in photoshoots isn't necessarily realistic, this photographer's approach is pretty novel. Plenty of brands have instituted a no-airbrushing policy, but celebrating the way a subject looks behind-the-scenes takes it to a whole other level. There's nothing wrong with flattering, professional photoshoots, but as Crabbe pointed out, showing other, "regular" angles and poses allows us to realize that gorgeous, touched-up photos don't tell the whole story — and that we shouldn't compare ourselves to someone else's "highlight reel."

As Crabbe wrote, "we sure as hell don't need to compare ourselves to anybody's highlight reel, after all, the model in the magazine doesn't even look like the model in the magazine most of the time."