Are pictures of faces intimidating to you?

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For some reason it frightens me to see pictures of fellow users in forums that I post in. But most of all, when I look at a picture of someone looking right at the camera, I feel like they are literally staring at me. It feels no different than having a real person in front of me.

(Funnily enough, faces are one of my minor interests, so much that I can tell differences between lookalikes and wonder why people think they look so similar in the first place. It really helps if they aren't making "eye contact.")

No pictures are just pictures to me.

The only pictures I find disconcerting are pictures of myself... ew...

Yes. Sometimes.

A friend of mine once shared this picture with me: Woman staring right at camera (link).

I found the picture very difficult to look at. It actually hurts my eyes almost as much as actual eye contact.

By contrast, Sweetleaf's avatar is pretty much just a picture to me.

That picture is indeed intense.
At least she has a blank "away with the fairies" look on her face, which makes it easier for me to handle, because it means that I'm not actually there to her.

But Sweetleaf's avatar is hard to look at for me.

The camera is too close in that picture. It gives the effect of being right in front of the person. It is a bit disconcerting. You can tell the camera is too close by how large her nose is. When you back the camera off and zoom in instead, it flattens the picture and makes it less intense.

I admit, I don't look her avatar in the eyes if I can help it, but that's my own thing.

Nope. I've never found pictures of people's faces intimidating in any way.

I get the impression that was the photographer's intent.

But yeah, this probably has a lot to do with how intense it is.

I've always had difficulty looking at pictures where the subjects are staring right into the camera. Even drawings of people looking right at the camera affect me; I remember being 12 or 13 and feeling uncomfortable while looking at promotional pictures of my then-special interest, the anime Rurouni Kenshin, because of the characters' eyes.

More recently, my poster of Johnny Depp's portrayal of the Mad Hatter, which I bought a little over a year ago, was quite unsettling to me at first because it is the picture where he directly faces the camera. However, after having it up for so long, I have grown accustomed to it and it no longer bothers me. In case you're wondering "Why did you buy a poster that made you uncomfortable?" Well, it's because I am a huge fan of the movie and of Johnny Depp in general. I bought it out of fangirl obligation.

It depends on the look of the person or the pictures they are using. If a person had a spider as their picture, I would literally scream with terror because I have a very extreme fear of spiders... or scary images. I can usually handle pictures of people with real life pictures of themself but... depending on if they are showing negative emotion or positive. NEgative emotions, I tend to panic over.

Sometimes. The more direct the eye contact, the worse it is. I just absolutely hate it when people look at me with their mouth open. That's one little thing that really bothers me a whole lot, and makes a world of a difference.

Rarely a few photos do annoy me, especially the photos that stare right back at you. As if I wanted to smash their faces with a medieval mace in my mid (not the modern mace that comes in bottles). I do not think it is intimidation: most likely a low tolerance to things that annoy me.

Most of the time, no.

But yes, this one makes me want to step back.

Pictures of faces don't really bother me. Than again, I'm a very strange breed of a WP member.

Only when I think about them being imitating; my mind MAKES them imitating when I think about it.