Why do we look different in mirrors and photos? Please Help!

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When I look in certain mirrors I either look really good or really bad. It's not lighting. And some of my photos look really good and some really bad. I look so different, all the time, so much so that it hurts my identity; would it be weird to say I don't know what I look like? Because I don't. Please help.

I'm the same way. I have no idea how I really look either. In some pictures I look one way, in others, like someone else completely. Same with mirrors. I don't ever consistently see the same person. I mean, I know it's me, but it's different. Both pictures of myself and mirrors freak me out a bit. Still, I feel compelled to stare at myself in mirrors sometime hoping to get a handle on what exactly I actually look like. Doesn't help.

Anyway, I know that isn't helpful. I guess I just wanted to say it isn't just a you thing.

Concave or convex mirror

I can relate. I seem to look different in some mirrors. But I look hideous whenever I turn on the self-facing camera on my phone. My face looks really big, long and square, and I look like a drug-addict who's just woken up from a 14-hour sleep. Really. Ugly.
I just hang on to the hope that I don't look remotely like that in real life.

I do feel and thought the same.

But that's usually how I see myself in relation to my physical self and this idea of self over something else...


Looking in the mirror and pictures of myself just reminds me more of it.
"A very unreliable human shell I'm trapped into".
Not merely because I seem to stand out or being weird -- but something else entirely; I've yet to describe what it is.

I can recognize myself visually and physically.
At the same time don't seem to like it and it is not consistent either -- sometimes it just looks strange, off, unnatural...


But it is possible that it's just the phenomena of seeing your own face as less attractive.

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"I have seen people change from looking just like one of their two parents, to looking just like the other of their two parents, in the same instant, as the angle of light changed in the room".

Thats what Mom said once. Never noticed that, but I can imagine it being true.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.timesofi ... 492206.cms
This? But this is more about photos and less about mirrors.


Though my experience and description is a bit different...

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Oh, that's the problem. I look great in the mirror but every single photo of me really sucks. Sad, sad...

Mirrors are the wrong way around.

What I mean is that my mole for eg is on the other side of my face to my reflection's.

Photos I guess it all has to do with the photographer's relation to you physically. For eg: if the person is taller than you, you will look shorter than you are in a mirror since they will be looking down at you. Or if the person is shorter than you, you will look taller than reality.

A way around this is for shorter photographers to stand on something and taller ones to kneel down taking the picture.

Besides, you never step in the same river twice.

This means, neither you or the river will be the same. Same with mirrors & cameras: you never take the same photo twice or look into the same mirror twice.