Photography, explained
Why do I hate photos of myself?
Partly because a photograph shows an unfamiliar, unflipped version of your face, and partly because you judge it against a standard nobody applies to…
Photography, explained
Partly because a photograph shows an unfamiliar, unflipped version of your face, and partly because you judge it against a standard nobody applies to…
In short: Partly because a photograph shows an unfamiliar, unflipped version of your face, and partly because you judge it against a standard nobody applies to you in real life. Almost everyone dislikes photographs of themselves — including people other people consider beautiful — which is the strongest evidence that the problem is the format rather than the face.
Before any judgement about attractiveness, there is a smaller and stranger reaction: this does not look like me. That is the mirror-reversal effect, and it fires in a fraction of a second, before conscious thought. What follows — the search for reasons, the list of flaws — is your mind explaining a feeling it already had.
Everyone else sees a picture of a person they know. You see a candidate for approval. You look at it longer, closer and more often, and you compare it against every other photograph of yourself that exists. Nobody else does any of that, which is why the reassurance you get feels hollow — it is answering a question you are not really asking.
It is worth saying plainly: not liking it is not a flaw. Being watched without being able to respond is uncomfortable for most people, and the discomfort shows in the body — the shoulders rise, the jaw sets, the hands go somewhere strange. Then you see the photograph of a person who was uncomfortable, and conclude you do not photograph well.
All of the physical part. Direction removes the guessing, movement removes the held stiffness, and a longer lens removes the distortion. In practice most people who describe themselves as unphotogenic produce usable frames within twenty minutes of being told what to do with their weight and their hands.
What does not get fixed by a photographer is the standard you are applying. That takes looking at a whole set instead of hunting for the worst frame, and giving it a week before deciding.
It is close to universal, and it is not correlated with how you look. The mirror-reversal effect and the judgement standard you apply to your own image explain most of it.
A photographer who directs will, because most of the discomfort comes from not knowing what to do. Say when you book that you find being photographed difficult — it changes how the session is structured.
Exposure. The more photographs of yourself you see, the less alien the unflipped version becomes. People who are photographed regularly stop having this reaction within months.
Next step
London-based, and happy to say when a session is not what you need.