Seeing yourself spaz on camera/in pictures?

Post Reply New Topic

Do you ever think you look semi-okay, and then when you see yourself on film you look like a total spaz? Or maybe it's the opposite, you think you look like a total spaz but then on film you look relatively normal.

Spaz (American definiton): Anxious.
Spaz (Australian definition): A derogatory term for someone with Cerebral Palsy. Usually said by children, teens and adults up to 30 as an insult, meaning mentally ret*d.

To answer your question: No. I don't think I look ok. My balance is poor and my symptoms have a way of just showing themselves, sometimes I'm unable to control them.

I think for some reason photography tends to make me look a bit strange, 9 out of 10 times.

I just look spacy and "lost" mostly in pictures...sometimes goofy...but not spazzy (american definition)

I'm usually making a weird face in photos (even though I thought I was smiling at the time). Also, I tend to find photos of myself with my hands in odd positions..wonder if it's something I do a lot that I'm not aware of...

mine could be the story of a gump who sees himself on the telly being interviewed, and says to himself, "who is that dork?"

I usually think "Do I really look that vile" and get rid of any pictures of videos that make me think that.

i don't do photogenic at the best of times. In response to the OP, yes but most of my photos are from parties that involve alcohol so i simply assume that people looking on my fb think i was drunk or something

Yes. Most photos of me taken by others seem to make me look like a jerk. The main exceptions were when I was in my late 20s/early 30s, when I seemed to look good under any lighting and from any angle.

Luckily I took a lot of photos of myself, and they generally came out quite well......I carefully controlled the conditions, and I made sure that I was looking OK before I hit the shutter.

I'ts possible that mirrors have something to do with the reason why.......with a single mirror you can only see yourself from the front, so that's the only angle I paid any attention to when I was prettying myself up. But cameras can take your picture from any angle, and it was quite a shock to see these new views of me from the side. Typically I wouldn't like my not-very-prominent chin, or the way my hair hung when viewed from the side, in the days when I had long hair.

Also, people who own cameras don't necessarily know much about portrait photography, they just point the thing and shoot. If you want a job doing right, do it yourself. All those funny lamps and white unbrellas in a photographer's kit bag have a purpose. If you're going bald and don't like it, do not use a high camera angle or tilt your head downwards....if you shoot from about nose level, those few remaining hairs on top of your head will look a lot thicker, like they do in a mirror. Unskilled photographers also tend to use wide-angle lenses too close up, which distorts people's faces.

And it's quite likely that I get very hung up on tiny "defects" that nobody else would notice, and amplify small differences out of all proportion......when I had very long hair, I wet it and combed it flat, and took a photo of myself. To me, it wasn't recognisable as me, but everybody else who saw it knew it was me immediately. It was clear that I saw myself very differently to the way they saw me.