To wonder why I always look awful in photographs?

[WillGymForPizza]

Just that really.

When I look in the mirror I don't think I look all that bad, but if someone takes a photo of me I can guarantee I will look at hot mess. In fact I don't think there is a single photo of me in existence where I look ok. I have an awful smile, but then if I don't smile and try to go all Victoria Beckham I look miserable and my jaw and cheeks look strange.

Candid photos are even worse. I nearly always seem to be pulling odd strange facial expressions, standing weirdly and my eyes always look small and piggy.

I know it's a first world problem really. But can anyone offer advice on how to look a bit more human in photos?

In most pictures I can be best described at 18 century ruddy checked farm worker. I have noticed that if I am in a terrible mood I take great pictures. So Christmas Day when I’m trying to lay the turkey down and everyone is singing I look like Nigella Lawson. At a wedding with 9 day old Ds when I was starving bleeding and tired and had to get a million pictures I look like a model. And in the flipping airport at 3 am waiting on a cancelled flight I’m like a leggy goddess.

So I can have nice pictures but not if I want happy memories every time I look at them.

This is me as well. When I know a camera is pointing at me I can feel myself tensing up and my face going awkward and frozen, I hate it. I only like a very few photos of me and they are mostly selfies that I did in a long session where I set it up carefully and took loads, then selected the odd one. (I need pics like these for work so that's what I do!)

The worst thing is in most photos I not only look fat, angry and confused, I also look just like my mum, which is not a good thing. In the mirror I don't think I look like her but in photos - bam. :(

A went to a wedding recently and did a lot of dancing as I lover a cheesy disco. Bride sent me a photo of me on the dancefloor. I looked like a deranged, fat, ungainly Jimmy Carr.

It goes the other way too. I’m with those of you who just pray I don’t look as shit in real life as I do in photos... but DH is ( like me?) pretty average looking IRL but always looks great in photos... its something to do with how the lens flattens faces. On some people that works to their advantage.

DD is utterly gorgeous IMO but still takes an avaerage photo 3 times out of 5...

A good photographer can use a ‘portrait lens’ with a specific depth of field etc with nice lighting - no direct flash etc and work wonders!

I look horrible in photos. Always a bit deranged looking, huge nose, fat cheeks, creepy smile.
Feel like I want to go and hide behind the nearest rock and never come out 😐

I'm an old gimmer. My advice is to put the photos away for 10 years. You'll look at them and think, goodness I was fine, what on earth was my problem.

Me too!

Mirror - damn girl, you look good

Boyfriend - ooh nice

Shop window - hello pretty lady

Camera - sack of spanners

Think I may have the reverse of body dysmorphia as I clearly think I look much better than I do!

When you look in the mirror and at selfies you see your face a certain way. When you see a photograph of yourself you see the mirror image so it looks all wrong to what you’re used to. But really the straight on photo is the ‘right you’. That’s what everyone else sees and is used to.

You probably don't look like you do in the mirror unless you have a perfectly symmetrical face - you see a reverse image and are used to it so when you see yourself in photographs it seems "off" and can feel grotesque even! (well thats how i feel!) You also don't look like you see yourself in photographs in reality. You're looking at a 2d image of yourself, probably taken with a flash, a fake facial expression and a bad angle. You don't look like that to everyone else.

Same here... makeup on, bathroom mirror = slightly better than average. Photos = lop-sided yellow-toothed horse face 🐴

i look better in the dark, on and off camera

I'm the opposite. I am mid 40's, and look pretty and photogenic in many photos (ones that I am posing for IYSWIM,) than I do in real life. And my skin and eyes look nice, and my smile looks quite cute. And I look 5-7 years younger on many pics too. I don't look hideous in real life, but look better on photos.

On video I look AWFUL. I look about 2 stone heavier than I do on photos with a fat ass and a double chin, and I look 7-8 years older than my age. I look rough and grim! No idea why. I thought it was because the video camera was giving a false image/lying somehow, but when I saw a few younger women in my family who had filmed themselves the other week, they looked the same; young and slim and pretty!

So as I look good on photos, and ghastly on video, I have surmised that I must be somewhere in between, (just OK looking,) and look roughly my age!!!

@Purposeless

My advice is to put the photos away for 10 years. You'll look at them and think, goodness I was fine, what on earth was my problem.

YEP, this.

I used to hate seeing pics of me as a young woman and thought I looked like a fat, ugly piece of shit. Yet when I look at the pics now (20 years later,) I looked great! Slim, and quite nice.

Weird!

@redzebra10 , don’t we all! You know that moment, at the end of a night out, when they suddenly switch the lights on to get rid of everyone*? Hate that.

*assuming they still do this? Haven’t been on a night out in quite some time 😂

I have moon face too. I think it's because my cheekbones are quite subtle. They are THERE in real life, but in photos they're flattened out and I'm just a round grinning goon

My problem is my face in pictures! 😂

Somebody replaces me in all pictures with a fat, old and tired looking lady who wears the same clothes as me.

I am absolutely the same. Very few decent photos of me but I look in the mirror and think I look quite alright!!!

Yep me too. I'm a slim size 8 and I always have a fat face and double chin and my eyes closed

If not I look bored or angry! Chandler bing in female

Me too...i look like a fat piece of wood with wrinkles! Passable in rl.

@foreverhomefornow you wrote my post for me

Oh this is me too. In real life I don't have a double chin. Take a picture of me and I have three of them unrolled down to my tits! Eyes always either closed or staring off in opposite directions. I hate hate hate having my photo taken and will do almost anything to avoid it!

It's not the mirror image thing here, I'm either looking the wrong way or half blinking or not quite smiling right or just have a Chandler-Bing face on. Unfortunately, it's the same with DH. We took about 30 photos of us with DD a couple of weeks ago - in every single one of them, one or other of us looks wrong, except the one where DD has moved so is just a link blur 🤦🏻‍♀️

I have the same problem, I mainly blame my eyes nowadays. They never seem to look properly open? But if I try to make them look as though they are I look like I'm giving a psycho stare! Don't know how people get nice photos at all, there's a really small handful of me I don't despise

This kinda thing? Seriously though yes! Hate having pictures taken as my general appearance just won't behave when in front of a lens. Sigh.

I'm a moose in photos. No matter how many techniques I try, tilting head, suck cheeks in a bit, angle body. I'm a moose. Guy at work commented on my First Aider photo and told me I was horrendously unphotogenic too and, thankfully, better in real life. I avoid the camera to all ends now, my ego is too fragile atm 😂

Thing is its not just posed photos, it's candid ones I didn't know were being taken as well. I look at them and think surely I didn't look that odd in real life?