Why your online photo may not look right…
I always found myself saying that my photo’s never look like me, and yet everyone else says they do! This was confusing until one day….
I can’t remember where I heard this or where I read this but what I discovered was that inside us we hold a mental picture of what we look like. When we see ourselves in a photograph often it doesn’t quite look right because the photograph and the image don’t match exactly – why?
Well our faces are not 100% symmetrical and we only ever see our own face in a mirror or reflection which is swapped left to right, whereas everyone else see’s us in a normal alignment that matches the photograph.
I think there is some truth in this, certainly for me, as I have often found I like my picture more when I open it in some image software and then flip the image so it is a mirror image and therefore must match my internal picture of myself better.
I’d be interested in others thoughts on this, maybe take a picture you are not sure about and flip it and see if it appeals more.
Mark Rhodes
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Comments
Mark,That’s very interesting observation.
It brings us to this question : “Can we ever see ourselves exactly the way others see us” Because,we have always seen ourselves either as a mental image or as a virtual reflection and not as a physical body unlike the way the world looks at us from the perspective of a physical body.
Regards
Uday, Thanks for your comment, I agree, what is more though other people don’t see us as we “really are” either. Because we all have our own beliefs, values and perceptions we judge and make assumptions about others and hence see them differently. Two people could meet the same person and one might comment they were unfriendly and the other feel they were ok – both have had the same experience but have made different judgements. Now we do this with people we see of course and if we feel someone is friendly they look more attractive to us compared to someone who makes us feel uneasy.
This means of course that others don’t necessarily see us how we really are in reality because their vision or view of us is passed through their filters and we focus on specific attributes of the person and hence change how they look to us.
Mark
August 24th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
hi
i think you are right , some how ………….