I have a very cute friend who can't seem to pose correctly for pictures. Whenever a camera comes out, he does this thing where he shows all his teeth like he's growling, and his eyes get all scared looking. But hey, better to look awful in pictures and great in real life than the other way around, right?

A decent photographer could capture you well...

Yeah, tangerine, I get that same thing myself. When I look in the mirror, I see a decent-looking guy; when I look at pictures of myself, I see the Pillsbury Doughboy after he's been beaten with a rake and left in the rain for a month. I don't get it.

I have the same problem tangerine. I can't figure out how to pose for pictures. Whenever I see a picture of myself, I think, "Oh, God, do I really look THAT awful?" Not so when I look in the mirror -- there, I don't necessarily think I'm gorgeous, but I defintely don't think I look as bad as the freakazoid I seem to be in photos.

One friend gave a tip that SOMETIMES seems to improve matters. If you typically have a wide, obviously forced grin (as I often do in photos), try a simple, ever-so-slight smile. Also, tilt your head slightly downward, and open your eyes somewhat wider than normal (despite the fact that you know the flash is coming). It feels really awkward -- like you're smirking and looking surprised at the same time, but I must admit that the results are often better than my "natural" pose.

I look terrible in candid photos, too, and I don't think I'm nearly as bad in real life. It makes camera-heavy meetups really annoying.

Oh join me in to this group. Any decent photos you ever see of me are because I'm doing exactly what treepour suggested (learnt it when getting wedding photos taken). You feel posed, but you look normal, or at least more in line with how you visualise yourself.

I'm in this group too, except that I really like all of my self-portraits when I'm half-smiling. But when I kinda-not-really smile for other people's photos, they get all upset and tell me to smile. Then my nose gets all pointy and my chin multiplies and I gain 20 pounds. What gives?

treepour is right- tilt your head down, while lengthening your neck (from the back/from your chest) to prevent scrunchy neck.

Same here. I have what I call my "photography weight" which is about 15 pounds lighter than I am. Unfortunately, not only does my body not want to be that weight, but I look sickly in real life when I am. I look like an anorexic with big boobs.

I actually learned that "sticking out your neck" lesson from watching Jon Lovitz do it on a talk show. He was talking about how he could gain or lose 20 pounds in one second and then looked at the camera & kept saying "Fat!" "Skinny!" as he lengthened his neck and then scrunched it in. It was funny, but then I tried it myself and IT TOTALLY WORKS! You feel like a freak when you're doing it, but it really makes you look skinnier in photos. I just have to remember to do it.

I've thought about this a lot! I have tons of pictures I've taken while looking in a mirror. Here are a handful of the most recent ones. I don't know what happens in that split second between the mirror and the camera.

I tense up in shots too - so I have that weird 50 good shots 50 freakoid rate thing going on, and my man is a photographer so there are plenty of hooknose, triple-chin, closed eyes, scrunched neck, tense mouth and "OMG!-get-out-of-the-bathroom-I'm-nekkid!" shots lying around here. Also plenty of pretty decent ones, including *gasp* nude ones. (now I can never be president, damn)

My tip is to simply relax, also everyone looks better with a half-smile rather than full smile, and tilt head just a tad downward while looking up to the photographer makes your face shape better - watch out not to over-do it if you have a long nose like me. :)

I photograph horribly, too. I always look either drunk (even when I'm sober) or manaical or just sweaty and ill.

I think I look gorgeous in the mirror, but in real life I'm not so gorgeous. I do think there are some people that take bad pictures. My sister says I "look better in real life." It's sweet of her to say. But, sometimes when you know and love a person you perceive them as much cuter than they actually are. :)

It's fascinating the way the brain can create a face and body you would prefer to see. The reflection I see when I catch myself off-guard is much different than when I'm intentionally looking in a mirror. I can also "tell" my brain to see the real me if I concentrate and relax enough. I get photos back and am shocked. I thought I was looking pretty fine on that day. Come to find out my face is chubby, my squinty eyes are hidden in a bunch of cheek flesh, and my nose is huge.

They say the camera never lies and I pretty much believe that's true for most people. The reason I believe this is because my children, my family members, my friends, etc. pretty much look like themselves in photos.

I think there are people who are photogenic and those who aren't. One of the things I first liked about watching "America's Next Top Model" was seeing how completely weird looking some of those women were when filmed going about their day, but how beautifully their features worked in still shots. And vice versa, how some of the very prettiest women looked washed out and boring and odd in still shots.

I can occasionally be photogenic, but it's almost always in posed shots. Candid shots tend to make me look totally insane. Part of it is that I think I have a reasonably mobile face when out in a group -- I smile and laugh a lot, and make weird faces when I'm relating stories, and sometimes make weird faces just for the sake of making weird faces -- so the probability of someone catching me at a moment when my face is in the process of doing something odd is high.

I've noticed that the photos taken at meet-ups that I like the most were taken when I was in the midst of being flirtatious or self-consciously dramatic. Both of which are definitely "pose-y" modes.

Anyway. Yes, joining you on the photo pain. And agreeing that most of the candid photos I've seen of both of us do neither of us any justice. :-)

Oh, I meant to add to the above: tangerine, you also tend to move your face a great deal in ways that animate your conversation, but probably don't translate well to still photography. Which is why I brought up the goofiness of my own face.

Another tip, look at the camera lense like it is a person and tell it to do something. Like think - "f-you" or "make me happy" or "don't even think about taking my picture" - if you can short circut the I'm-having-my-picture-taken feeling, you're halfway home, and this is one way to do it.

I'm sure you're beautiful!

Ha! Related.

Another tip, look at the camera lense like it is a person and tell it to do something.

I tried to do that here. It didn't work.

AskMe thread on this subject here.

I'm a great big tall specimen, with broad shoulders and hips. In person on a good day, I feel strong and brawny and handsome; in photos, I too often look like a big ungainly lump, her broad countenance broken only by her thousand wet and slippery teeth.

I do notice that in my most appealing photos, I'm doing what's advised in that thread: cocking my head slightly to one side or turning a leg to break the straight axis of ankle-to-head, keeping my chin level or dropped rather than arched, sporting a moderate smile instead of a face-splitting grin.

And keeping my eyebrows in check, for goodness sake. Far more often, I'm facing the camera head-one with an eyebrow raised and my lip curled. Photo-Elsa wrily doubts all assertions.

This tip could be in the other threads or not, but flip / reflect your pictures in photoshop or whatever image editor and you'll see in the image what you're used to seeing in the mirror. I think there's a dissonance for many when they look at themselves in photos because it's the unreflected view (i.e. not the mirror view, which is what they're used to seeing). This doesn't always work (sometimes it's too noticeable / ruins the image / spells stuff backwards, etc) but it often can help you feel better about your image in the pic.

yes, I agree very few people know "instictively" or are lucky to get photogenic poses in pictures. And the whole-mirror experience ruins it, as safetyfork says. Usually one tries a little and just gets it right in the end. Or maybe they are just ugly.

I have a lot of "shadows" (ppl with photographic skillz say, not I, I have none of those) which come out horribly in pictures. So there, never believe a picture of mine, I am like infinitely more beautiful. Gorgeous even. har. har.

What safetyfork says: we're not used to seeing ourselves as others see us, since mirrors flip our images. We're all asymmetrical, but we're accustomed to seeing the imbalances in one way, while others see us entirely differently. I've had the experience of looking in something called a 'reality mirror,' which is a mirror that does not flip your image right-to-left, and it's unsettling. It looked as unpleasantly foreign to me as a lot of photos of me do.

Another factor is that in the mirror, you always get to choose the head-on, chin-up point of view, and simply being able to see yourself causes a lot of unconscious adjustments (you stand taller, adjust hair, etc.). When the angle is chosen by someone else, it's not dead-on. Most photos taken of me from that angle, I like - so I know that it's just the way I'm used to seeing myself, and I'm more comfortable with that.

I hate most photos of me, but I've reconciled myself to it. Obviously that's what I look like to other people in my world, and obviously they (mostly) don't run away scratching their eyes in horror at a hideous spectacle. If they think I look OK, then I have decided to go with them.

Photos are such a shallow, flat representation of a person, anyway. I always marvel at photos of people I know - they are just fleeting flashes of the person, when the reality of them being there, speaking and moving, has so many more dimensions on which to determine their beauty.

See, it isn't the mirror-flip thing, because I do have some normal-looking pictures of myself. I suspect it's a combination of the non-tilted angle (per Miko) and the face-jumping-around in conversation thing (per occhi). Presumably I know how to fix these things unconsciously when I'm in control of the camera, but I can't when it's someone else. Interesting.

And that AskMe occhi linked freaked me out a little. I hadn't seen it. The poster is an old friend of mine, someone I've known since I was twelve; how odd that we should both have posted on the same day about disliking our pictures. (And no, we weren't at the same event; I haven't seen her since Christmas!)