Why You Look Bad in Photographs
Jan 16th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | 6 Comments |
Photos are 2D, and make your face look 2D. There’s no depth-difference between your nose and your ear in a photo. You don’t have to refocus your eyes to move from one part of the picture to another, like you would if you were looking at a real face. Everything appears equidistant, flat.
Imagine what your face would look like flattened in real life. Just take all your features and facial structure and steam-roll ‘em. That’s what photos do to you.
So you know how people talk about some people being “photogenic”? It’s not a compliment. It just means those people’s faces look good flattened. And that’s disgusting. Nothing to be proud of.
On video you look better because, even though TV is just as 2D as photos (no eye-focus adjustment needed to look at different parts of the recorded environment), the projected movements and altering perspectives help the viewer’s brain get a better handle on what it is you really look like.
But we’ll always look better in real life. Until virtual reality/holography is mastered, at least. Then we’ll all look good recorded too, and we won’t have to be afraid of cameras anymore.
You make me laugh. I thought I just looked bad in photos because I don’t like having my picture taken, and usually end up all frozen-smile crazy-eyes.
So you know how people talk about some people being “photogenic”? It’s not a compliment. It just means those people’s faces look good flattened. And that’s disgusting. Nothing to be proud of.
LOL
:) I miss when we lived in the same building….
I actually find that I look better in photographs and I believe it’s for exactly the reasons you state. A picture from the front “flattens” my slightly too large nose.
You might find it interesting that for a century or two it was actually the fashionable thing to have your portrait painted in profile since that is the angle that best displays the uniqueness of an individuals features.
In more “recent” times (the past three or four centuries) it has been preferable to paint portraits in the three-quarters angle since that one most realistically depicts the volume of an individual’s face and features.
Also, these days photographers use photoshop to enlargen the eyes to mimic what we see in our 3-D world.
Also, most people look better with bigger eyes…
[...] Why You Look Bad in Photographs Photos are 2D, and make your face look 2D. There’s no depth-difference between your nose and your ear in a photo. You don’t have to refocus your eyes to move from one part of the picture to another, like you would if you were looking at … [...]
[...] think the issue was that Pope Benedict XVI suffers from an condition which afflicts many of us. As I’ve written before, to be “photogenic” is simply to have the kind of face that looks good flat, [...]