What To Look For In Photographs Of You As A Child

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Don't get me started on body snatchers and the like , when i was in the midst of a psychotic episode I thought I was the last human

Liverpool's one of the best cities in the world. The Beatles are from there.

I seem to be happy and smiling in most of my childhood pictures. There are some where I had a blank look.

not so much pictures of me, i could usually scrounge up an appropriate smile when directed to, but i saw a video of myself as a wee one and it looked... fairly obvious. I walked with my head down and a weird bouncy gate with t-rex arms

me at 3 months. i could not be tempted to look at the people behind the camera. my mother told me i was fixated on something no one could determine during the time they tried to take this shot.

Do you still have kiss curls

i do not know what that means but i am completely different looking than that now. i have grown up.

Kiss curls are hair curls that flop over your forehead ( think Cristopher Reeves as Superman )

My family never takes photos. When we go on road trips I usually just take pictures of buildings nothing else really. Except maybe of my Stuffed piplup. That might make it somewhat obvious. Especially considering that was last year.

I've attempted to analyze a few baby photos of myself. In most of them, I look worried/scared/uncomfortable. My eyebrows are scrunched up and I'm not smiling. In a few I actually look happy. One specific picture seems to be a professional type photo where you dress up the baby and have the baby sit on the ground. I look happy and relatively normal in that one. Which is weird because I imagine it would've involved meeting a stranger and them ferociously waving toys at me to get me to smile. Anyway, I doubt I have autism, but coming across baby photos of myself makes me think it's possible I was born with my current "condition" or traits.

What's interesting about this video is how she describes multiple photos of herself as a young child looking miserable or angry in different ways, and that is exactly my situation. Nearly all of the photos of me between, say, 1 year old and 5 years old are me looking miserable. And even after age 5, any pictures of me that are outdoors involve me squinting (everything is always too bright). There's one taken at the air show of me and my siblings and my dad. Everyone is smiling and looking at the airplanes, and I am squinting so hard my eyes look like they're closed. I squint all the time, and I often get mistaken for being pissed off because squinting makes me look angry. I'm not; it's just too bright. Now I wear sunglasses and the world is a happier place to be.
In all the photos, I'm always uncomfortable, always having a miserable time, never doing anything that I am interested in, and always being shushed and pushed aside by my brothers and sisters.
My mom says she remembers me as a very unhappy child. I was unhappy; I was uncomfortable and no one cared.

When I was young, I was trained to always smile during photos by saying "cheese". I am still not certain if those are considered "real" smiles or "fake" smiles.

In most of my childhood photos, I have no expression or I look like I'm thinking about something very hard and ignoring the camera (which was often the case). My mom and brother could sometimes coax a genuine smile out of me by telling me something funny. As I got older, my smiles all looked very fake, like a grimace or like I'm physically ill, especially in school photos. I was not good at faking expressions yet.

My dad was much the same way, either no expression, scowling, or fake smile-grimace. I am pretty sure he was also on the spectrum--we shared many of the same symptoms.

I can´t see a vacant look in my baby/toddler photos, but I actively turned away from the camera, or looked at it with a "Piss off" - expression. Stoneface.
I didn´t smile much and used to resist body- and eye contact.
My mom used to think of me as a little alien.

Photographing unconventional subject matter is something I do even as an adult. I do photograph people and whatever else I'm paid to shoot, but I'm also fascinated with photographing mundane details that most people overlook. When they see my photos, they are often surprised at the beauty or poignancy in ordinary things that they likely wouldn't have seen. A lifetime of looking down, or at anything but other people, sometimes pays off when it comes to creative expression.

It's interesting you two mention what you took or take pictures of; I dabble in photography (though not intensely enough to be a special interest) and the biggest prevailing feature of my pictures is that there are no people at all!

I take pictures of everything else, including animals, landscapes, objects, etc, but I never include people in my photos, and if someone happens to be in the landscape, I wait until they've walked on out of my frame.

Someone recently was looking through my pictures and pointed out how there were no people.