# Do some people just not photograph well? If so, why? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 27, 2009, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727 "2009-12-27T19:59:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/21 "2009-12-28T01:43:14Z")
> [@The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](#): > > _ **Please note that this is just speculation, not a factual answer.** _ > > I’ve noticed that people who photograph poorly often have an unusual smile. Either their lower lip protrudes down further than is normally the case, or their lower lip doesn’t go down as much as it should. Finally, some people’s smiles make their eyes exceptionally squinty, which also looks unattractive. Do you have any pictures of your friend not smiling? Does she look any more attractive in those pictures? Yeah. I don’t smile for a photograph. Mainly because I don’t really smile, I smirk. Lopsidedly. Trouble is, I don’t have the gravitas to carry off a really serious demeanor in a photograph either. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/22 "2009-12-28T03:32:44Z")
And here I thought it was just me, that I was all alone in looking like an ugly freak of nature. No good picture of me has been taken since I was a young cutie. Now I’m an older cutie, I can’t understand why I look so hideous in every picture taken. I haven’t changed THAT much. But there it is - one eye squinty, or a double chin, or I’m blinking, or I look like I’ve had a stroke. I can’t possibly be that ugly. I can’t believe people can live with me, I’m so ugly. At least in pictures. Family photos? You’d think Mr. Sali was a single dad! ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/23 "2009-12-28T04:07:15Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Some people are very animated - always moving, always reacting, always responding to their environment. Freeze them in time and they can be quite ordinary, but in motion, they’re beautiful. Another vote for this. I can vividly remember a couple of instances where I’ve approached / been introduced to someone that I thought looked OK…until they started speaking at which point I became mesmerised. And I’m not talking about personality, per se, I just mean the way their face moved. Probably something about the muscles of the face and/or the way they use them (maybe in a few years they’ll be an Abdominizer for the face ;)). Also I’d say photography is a great leveller in terms of height and skin tone and probably other attributes I can’t think of right now ---
**Author:** ![aerodave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f08c70/32.png) [@aerodave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aerodave)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/24 "2009-12-28T05:25:50Z")
> [@Baal\_Houtham](#): > > I’ve dealt with numerous “blinkers” but she was the queen. Normally I can put people at ease and then fool them with phony 1-2-3 counts, or take the picture in the middle of giving them instructions. Did not work with her. > > I even switched to an essentially silent point and shoot camera, and still couldn’t get a relaxed face. Maybe three shots out of 50 she wasn’t in the process of blinking, and those three weren’t good either. My experience with “blinkers” like this is when doing flash photography. I don’t know if you’re talking about using a flash in your anecdote, but that’s the normal cause in my experience. The problem with modern flashes is that they typically emit a quick pre-flash just a fraction of a second before the actual exposure. The purpose of this is to send out a pulse of known brightness and see how much it illuminates the scene. The camera can then quickly figure out how much flash power to use for the actual shot. Point-and-shoots do this, as do the the built-in flashes on SLRs and shoe-mount flash units on SLRs. This is called “through-the-lens flash metering” I shoot Pentax, so this mode is called P-TTL, which works similarly to Canon’s E-TTL and Nikon’s i-TTL. (Note that this is different from red-eye reduction flash, which provides a different pre-flash with a different delay to constrict the subject’s pupils. If a camera uses pre-flash to set the exposure, and red-eye reduction is enabled, a total of three flash pulses will be used when an image is taken.) So the delay between this exposure-checking pre-flash and the main flash is normally so short that people can’t reflexively blink before the picture is taken. but a handful of people out there (my wife, unfortunately, is one) have blink reflexes fast enough to always get caught by the main exposure. In the case of my wife, the only way I can get a good picture of her using flash is to use a shoe-mount flash on one of my SLRs, and to _not_ use P-TTL mode because it causes the pre-flash. Instead, I have to set the flash unit to manual and dial in my own flash power, or set it to “Auto” which is different from P-TTL. “Auto” on a modern flash means the flash unit uses its own light sensor to decide how much light to send out, once you tell it what aperture and ISO you’re shooting with. Either “Manual” or “Auto” on my flash result in a single pulse being emitted, instead of the pre-flash used in TTL metering. When I take these steps to make sure that a single flash pulse is used, there’s no blinking. The first flash…the one that normally makes neurons react and start closing eyelids…is also the last one, so there’s no chance to catch the blink. Unfortunately, this isn’t an option with any point-and-shoot cameras I’m aware of, and the pop-up flashes on SLRs have the same limitation: TTL metering only. And because of that, some people will always blink when photographed by the more automatic equipment. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/25 "2009-12-28T05:41:52Z")
I had a coworker in my last job who was jaw-dropping gorgeous. Pictures where he’s posing look fine (nowhere near as good as the real thing, but enough to make people go “ooow, who’s the cutie?” - I would love to see pics of him taken by a good photographer); in candid pictures he’s always goofing off, laughing or making big gestures (which don’t look nowhere near as big in 3D), so you’d never believe that he makes rooms silent just by walking in. ---
**Author:** ![HazelNutCoffee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@HazelNutCoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HazelNutCoffee)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/26 "2009-12-28T08:19:03Z")
Sometimes bad features just become more pronounced in a photo, at least in my experience. For example, one of my eyes is bigger than the other because of a tiny scar that adds a fold in my eyelid. It’s not really noticeable except in certain photos. Then I look like weird, like half of me is falling asleep. ---
**Author:** ![Baal\_Houtham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baal_houtham/32/13604_2.png) [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2009, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/27 "2009-12-28T16:23:55Z")
> [@aerodave](#): > > The problem with modern flashes is that they typically emit a quick pre-flash just a fraction of a second before the actual exposure. ## My memory isn’t perfect, but there’s a hair light so it was likely monolights triggered by a synch cord. And regarding the OP, several good explanations have been offered and I’ll say there’s more than one reason that causes people not to photograph well. In addition to frozen facial muscles, lack of animation, weird eye focusing points, there are the usual posing and lighting hints that need to be remembered, such as: –Men usually get shot from chin level and women from eye level – Flat lighting makes a face broader, side lighting narrower ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2009, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/28 "2009-12-30T04:53:42Z")
> [@Arkcon](#): > > I don’t know if this applies to the situation you have, but it is a common thing in photography. Some women, with fine, fair hair, distributed over their face and body, look very beautiful – under correct lighting and photographic conditions. For example, Marylin Monroe. The theory is this fine sparse hair functions as “light pipes”, something like fiber optics, to give the complexion a sort of glow. But you have to illuminate it correctly, and photographic properly, otherwise, I’ve just described a slightly hairy woman, which isn’t nearly as flattering. 😉 Wait, seriously? I’ve never heard this about Marilyn Monroe. If they removed said hairs would they still be as attractive? (I’m pretty insane about hair removal myself.) ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2009, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/29 "2009-12-30T16:08:11Z")
Marilyn Monroe would have had fine DARK hairs distributed all over her face, seeing as how she was a natural brunette. I read her choice of hair color was named “Dirty Pillow Slip”! I still don’t know why the image I see in the mirror looks OK, but a snapshot of that image looks like a sub-mental troll! I once posed for one of those sepia photos they take at booths at state fairs, where you dress up as cowboys or bar girls. I put on a hat with feathers, fishnet stockings, and was wearing a mini-skirt bustier, perched on a bar, but again - a bad picture or am I actually that homely? Mr. Sali was very comforting, though. He pointed out that as I would have been one of the very few women in a town in the old west, I still would have made a ton of money selling my favours, even if I was homely! Thanks, Mr. Sali! ---
**Author:** ![Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e56c9b/32.png) [@Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harriet_the_Spry)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2009, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/30 "2009-12-30T16:14:51Z")
In snapshots with flash, my beautiful blue eyes are almost always glowing with the red of demon possession. I know red eye can be fixed, but since my eyes are probably my best feature, they really don’t come across in snapshots. They often look great in studio photos, though. ---
**Author:** ![rhubarbarin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eb9ed0/32.png) [@rhubarbarin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rhubarbarin)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2009, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/31 "2009-12-30T21:01:01Z")
Certainly some people are just not ‘photogenic’, but I don’t have a scientific explanation. I’m a good-looking girl with good bone structure, and yet due to several causes I look like a goober in 95% of pictures. In the other 5% I look pretty. With proper lighting, the brighter the better, I can look like a movie star (this almost never happens, of course). In black and white I tend to look much better than in color (I never get my picture taken in B+W, though). In my case, it’s that a] I am extremely uncomfortable in front of the camera, and I freeze up, b] I am a very fidgety person, so the chances that a fidget or facial twitch will be captured are high, c] I have very deep-set eyes and sharp cheekbones that can give me a skull-like aspect, d] I have low-contrast coloring (light yellow skin, dark yellow hair, light eyes) and d]I have abnormally large pupils, so with flash I always have red-eye. All these things combine in hilarious ways. I used to be mortified by bad pictures, but now I just have to laugh. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2009, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/32 "2009-12-31T00:31:27Z")
To elaborate on the point made by **Allesan** about ‘animated’ faces, people can look dramatically different from different angles. An animated person with some ‘bad’ angles can in person move through them quickly, which doesn’t come through in photos. This effect would be more pronounced if you were interacting with that person: when they are addressing you, they would be giving you their ‘good’ side(s). ---
**Author:** ![NinetyWt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/cc9497/32.png) [@NinetyWt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinetyWt)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2009, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/33 "2009-12-31T00:57:33Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > I photograph absolutely awfully (same thing on video.) My boyfriend does video for a living and owns a camera shop and he has completely failed at taking a good picture of me. Everybody says I don’t really look like that - I can only hope. Ditto. I look like Winston Churchill in photos. Blecch. Someone once told me it’s because my face is round. When the camera flattens it out, I look bloated. Also for some reason my eyes always look like I’m staring. ---
**Author:** ![Magicicada](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c67d28/32.png) [@Magicicada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magicicada)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2009, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/34 "2009-12-31T01:44:01Z")
On a somewhat related note, I have often considered making a hideous face when my photo is taken for my driver’s license renewal, the plan being to subvert that funhouse chip in the DMV’s camera which makes us all look inbred. I’m up for renewal in late '11, so I’ll let you all know if it works. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2009, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/35 "2009-12-31T03:37:11Z")
Okay, everybody who has posted in this thread about how unphotogenic they are must now submit pictures to the [SMDB Message Board Photo Gallery](http://www.nouilles.info/sdpix/index.html)so we can all decide for ourselves. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2009, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/36 "2009-12-31T18:32:51Z")
That’s no evidence, though, because if you saw my picture you’d just think I was ugly and I have no way to refute it! ---
**Author:** ![NinetyWt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/cc9497/32.png) [@NinetyWt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinetyWt)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2010, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/37 "2010-01-01T03:28:22Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > That’s no evidence, though, because if you saw my picture you’d just think I was ugly and I have no way to refute it! Ditto. I cannot find a non-ugly photo of myself that isn’t about 15 years old. ---
**Author:** ![DieLorelei](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@DieLorelei](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DieLorelei)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2010, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/38 "2010-03-24T18:18:32Z")
I am the same way; I may take ONE good picture out of thousands, yet my friends, and many others describe me as very beautiful; or gorgeous. For this reason, I can’t meet anyone online because they always ask for more pictures, and that scares the hell out of me. I fell crazy in love with a guy from Germany. We emailed each other for almost a year before I got the courage to get a webcam. I will never forget the look of disappointment he had on his face. to this day, the pain of his subtle and snide comments hurt so much. The next day, I took the webcam back, and went to see my friend, Laurie at one of my favourite cosmetic counters. I wanted to buy everything she sold, and when I treid to explain to her waht had happened, I stood there sobbing uncontrollably. She told me, as so many others do, that I am a very beautiful woman, and that I couldn’t let that upset me so much. I, myself, can look in the mirror, and see the extreme difference in how I photograph, and how I truly am in person. I, for one, am so very tired of having to explain myself. As to the German guy, I still love him, but I could never face him again, and wish to God I could just show up at his door and make him eat those words, and ask, Now,…what was that you were saying? Maybe one day I will!! if anyone has any constructive suggestions as to what I can do about my photogenicity dilemna, I welcome them. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2010, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/39 "2010-03-24T18:42:04Z")
> [@needscoffee](#): > > In a [recent Straight Dope column](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2905/does-the-camera-really-add-ten-pounds-plus) on how cameras seem to add 10 pounds, Cecil explains that It’s just as you postulated, many faces look great in 3D, but in 2D they look wrong. You can see where a face curves back around, but the camera just makes it all look like one plane. It seems to me that the less angular (or the more regular) the face is in the spherical sense (if you understand what I’m trying to describe), the better it photographs. One of my daughters has a wide, flat-ish face which looks gorgeous in person, but in some photos looks really odd. My husband has a broad forehead which looks totally normal in person, but in photos looks like it’s exploding. > > In 8th grade, I was friends with a girl who was one of the homelier girls in class. Her eyes were way too close set, her face was flat, her hair was frizz, and she also was maybe 15 pounds overweight. Near the end of the year, she told me she did modeling. I didn’t believe her, so she showed me the current issue of Seventeen magazine, where she was in 3 different ads. I could hardly tell it was her. And this was decades before Photoshop. I noticed a similar difference just yesterday. I was watching the Dick Van Dyke show, and the start looks quite photogenic. At the end credits, thoh, they have the most unflattering picture of him. My hypothesis was that, when we see him moving around, we get an idea of how he looks in 3D. I wonder if any of you guys look better in video, too. One of the banes of dating online was discovering this disparity, BTW. It’s the reason I don’t give “Myspace photos” such a bad time, as they might just be making up for what the camera lost. ---
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2010, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727/40 "2010-03-25T13:58:29Z")
People hate their own pictures because they are seeing a flipped image from that which they always see in a mirror. Any bit of asymmetry stands out. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-just-not-photograph-well-if-so-why/522727.md?page=3)