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What being on Camera Taught Me About Being Poised
There is a moment from my anchoring days that I still think about, sometimes.
Once I was seated in an uncomfortable position for an outdoor shoot. Although it was bearable at first, I could feel it in my back within a few minutes. But since the camera was rolling, I kept going. I carried on as if everything was fine, with a confidant smile.
I didn’t realise that my discomfort was visible on screen. That’s when the director called cut. He looked at me, and asked if I was comfortable and was anything bothering me?
I told him about the uncomfortable seating position. That is when he told me something that stayed with me till this day. He said if something feels off while shooting, I need to say so because in the end it shows on camera. Not in obvious ways but from my facial expressions, body language and the way I speak.
I thought I was hiding the uncomfortable feeling with a smile. But that day I learned that a smile cannot hide everything.
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Until then, I believed that being poised means keeping your composure. I thought being confident on camera meant pushing through our discomfort and hiding it. But that day, I realised what poise really meant. Sitting there in that uncomfortable position while being gently corrected by the people who could clearly see what I thought I had masked perfectly, I learned an important life lesson.
True poise was never about hiding the truth. Instead, it was about being self-aware enough to notice what is off and honest enough to point it out. This kind of self-awareness is where real elegance begins.
The camera does not lie the way we do. It sees the tension that we try to hide. It catches the stiffness that we think nobody notices. What I learned that day is that being really elegant is not about hiding how we really feel. It is about being comfortable with the camera and with ourselves.
Real elegance is when we are okay, with who we're so we do not have to pretend to be someone else. The camera shows us what we are really like. That is what I learned. Real elegance is being ourselves and that is what the camera sees.
That single correction changed the way I understood confidence too. For a long time, I thought confidence was what carried you through, that if you smiled and spoke steadily, everything else would fall into place.
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But confidence without substance will not take you so far.
What actually grounded me was research. It made me aware pf what I was talking about. This actually made me knowledgeable rather than just performing it.
Something shifted, when I started writing my own scripts instead of just reading what was handed to me. I wasn't reciting the script anymore, I understood what I was saying. That gave me a kind of confidence I couldn't fake.
I think that's the quiet truth about being poised. It isn't a performance you put on for the camera or for a room full of people. It is what is left when you are not trying to perform.
It is the real you, the version of you that does not need to hide how you feel because you are confident enough to name it. It is about showing up prepared enough so that you don’t have to pretend confident.
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Standing in front of that camera taught me that poise is not about looking like nothing is bothering you. It is, about being real so you do not need to hide anything.
There is more from those years that I want to write about. But this one lesson, that I learned in one uncomfortable moment is the one that has stuck with me till this day and has changed how I think about elegance.
