brian_keller Posted July 25, 2003 Share Posted July 25, 2003 I find it interesting how someone can look at themselves in the mirror everyday and think nothing of it and yet when they see a picture of themselves its a huge deal and all of a sudden its almost strange to see oneself in a picture. Why is this? Brian. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
h._p. Posted July 25, 2003 Share Posted July 25, 2003 Familiarity and vanity. You're used to the mirror but unless you're an actor or a model, seeing yourself on paper is strange. Also, we associate printed images with importance. Little things can affect us surprisingly strongly. Many years ago I had a friend who worked with a childrens' charity that tried to deal with disruptive kids who, as a whole, suffer from extremely poor self esteem. One thing they tried was taking the childrens' pictures every so often and giving them the results. They found that the more they prettied up the images: printing big, mounting, framing, etc, the more the children valued them and the more they then valued themselves. I'm not sure how far they took the initiative but they apparently had some good results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duolian Posted July 25, 2003 Share Posted July 25, 2003 When we see ourselves in the mirror, we are not seeing our face the way it looks to others, or the way it looks to us when we see it in a photo. Our "mirror image" is precisely that: it is flipped horizontally from how it appears to others (or in a photo). This makes a difference, because most people's faces are not perfectly bilaterally symetrical. Indeed, sometimes there is quite a difference between one side of a person's face and the other. In such cases, the horizontally-flipped version, while perhaps still recognizable as the same person, can look quite different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
minh_thai Posted July 25, 2003 Share Posted July 25, 2003 I think the big difference is how you see yourself vs. how others see you. I don't get that excited looking at my self-portrait. M Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tom_menegatos Posted July 25, 2003 Share Posted July 25, 2003 I remember reading somewhere that a lot of people prefer the look of themseles in photos if they have been mirrored. Just a thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markci Posted July 25, 2003 Share Posted July 25, 2003 I've never had that feeling about seeing a photo of myself. I do have it, though, when I hear a recording of my voice. From what I understand, most everyone has a very distorted sense of what their own voice sounds like, due to hearing it transmitted mostly through the bones of the skull rather than air. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe_garrick Posted July 26, 2003 Share Posted July 26, 2003 I agree completely on the voice. I actually failed to recognize my own recorded voice on one occasion. There's a strange dynamic at work when people look at their own photos. Few people will admit to enjoying having their photo taken, nearly everyone enjoys seeing them, but almost no one will admit their own photo is good, even if it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jespdj Posted July 26, 2003 Share Posted July 26, 2003 My feeling about this is the following: The photo is more permanent than the mirror image and so you feel you have less control over it. The mirror image disappears when you walk away from the mirror, but the photo stays, and other people can look at it even while you're not there. Most people worry about how they look and how they come across to others. A photo shows how you look and it does so even if you're not around (i.e. when you have no control at all about what the person who's looking at the photo thinks), so that's why photos of people are a big deal to them. regards Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hclim Posted July 26, 2003 Share Posted July 26, 2003 A photo is an image while a reflection on a mirror is just a reflection. An image carries with it character, aesthetics, symbolism, status, poise, maybe other things as well. When one looks oneself in the mirror, all these can be cancelled out in the mind. Just my try at philosophy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennisdixson Posted July 26, 2003 Share Posted July 26, 2003 The older you get the more disturbing it is to see yourself in the mirror. The photos from twenty years ago are starting to look much better to me now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duolian Posted July 28, 2003 Share Posted July 28, 2003 Hmmm. Don't know why this is so hard to get, folks. It's not philosophical; it's optical. <i>We actually look different</i> when we look at ourselves in a mirror than we do when we look at ourselves in a photo. Here's an illustration using the fine <a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo.tcl?photo_id=485978">portrait by Steve Bingham</a> that was Photo of the Week Feb. 24, 2002.<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edward_kang Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 Dave, claiming that horizontal reversal is what provokes someone's existential and emotional response to a photograph and not to looking in a mirror is naive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edward_kang Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 Not wanting to be the ultimate curmudgeon, I decided to try Dave's mirror test on myself, and the results are truly frightening.<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
todd frederick Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 I try not to look at mirrors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
airgead Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 My Wife had some professional portraits done some years ago and when we went in to choose the prints I noticed that many of them had been flipped. I also noticed that the photographer was pointing all the flipped shots to her and all the unflipped ones to me. When I asked the photographer about this he told me that it was an old trick used to increase sales - the flipped image looks like the image in the mirror so the subject is more likely to buy a print that looks like they are used to seeing themselves. The unflipped images are shown to the non-subjects as this is the way they are used to seeing the subject and are thus morte likely to buy a non-flipped print. Apparently it can make a 20-30% difference in sales. Not sure how true this all is but interesting nontheless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david_littleboy__tokyo__ja Posted July 31, 2003 Share Posted July 31, 2003 "Not sure how true this all is but interesting nontheless." It's even worse than you think. Linguists play the game of asking native informants if certain sentences are OK or not and then infering the rules of grammar (according to the particular formalism they believe in). At one point one linguist came up with a test that demonstrated that people have _different_ grammars for their native language (for a particular phenomenon in English grammar, anyway) depending on whether the subjects could see themselves in a mirror or not. The test was reliable and repeatable and demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction that the phenomenon was real. Ouch. I wonder if grammar changes again if people are tested sitting in front of an 13x19 portrait of themselves. Dunno if all this demonstrates that people are nuts or that linguistics is nuts. Probably both... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twmeyer Posted July 31, 2003 Share Posted July 31, 2003 "I try not to look at mirrors." ... Todd F.<p> This is why I make self portraits every week... I don't like surprises like Todd doesn't like mirrors. The last thing I want is to wake up one day and discover I'm old. I'm taking <i>that</i> realization in installments.<p> Back on topic... I think the reversed image is a real factor. I'd walk out on any photographer that used that kind of Psy-ops tactic on me.<p> It also is the still image as opposed to the animated one. As a former landscape photographer, I am well aware that people look at the world around them without seeing everything, but when that world is removed from it's functional context and all it's detail rendered static and clear, those details take on heightened realism and value. When those details are your face... look out. <p>I read an article about plastic surgury in which a surgeon said the one device that got her more customers than any other, is the extreme closeup illuminated mirror... t<p>p.s. the ability to edit on the fly is essential to balanced sanity. Imagine if we remembered or even registered every stimuli experienced every day... we'd all be nuts within minutes. The things that don't require essential attention from us <i>and</i> that we have no control over are edited out on the first pass, and that includes the details of your own face after we're done shaving (or applying makeup/contact lenses, hair gel, whatever). People who <i>can't</i> edit sufficiently take something like Paxcil or Prozak. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
minh_thai Posted July 31, 2003 Share Posted July 31, 2003 I'm not sure if I buy the horizonal flip argument. My face is pretty symmetrical (I can't tell if it's been flipped) and I still get a vastly different emotional response from a picture than a mirror. :) M. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandeha Lynch Posted August 1, 2003 Share Posted August 1, 2003 Ticklish question. Yes, there's the optical flip issue, and the brain filtering too, but on that score it's really very similar to the fact that you can't tickle yourself. Only other people can provoke the tickle response. You look in the mirror and you are looking at you. Pick up a photo of yourself and you know someone else is looking ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
struan_gray Posted August 1, 2003 Share Posted August 1, 2003 A related question that many LF and MF photographers experience when they show people their cameras is why people find a moving image on a ground glass so much more fascinating than a moving image in a mirror. The frame, and the change in size are all important, which to me suggests that feelings of capture are the key. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robert hague Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 When you look down at your chin in the mirror, your reflected eyes also look down. But when you track across your picture, the eyes remain still. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bacsa Posted August 4, 2003 Share Posted August 4, 2003 I personally am disgusted both when I look into a mirror and when I look on a photo of myself. Ditto with voice and other forms of self-manifestation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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