Why You Think You Look Bad in Photos | Teri Hofford | TED

hands up if you've said I hate having my photo taken or I'm just not photogenic or I look bad in photos all right now standardly my usual response would be that you just haven't had me as your photographer yet but today I want to let you know that you are not alone as a bwire and portrait photographer for the last 10 years I've had the immense privilege of photographing thousands of humans and thus thousands of bodies and they've all said something similar before their photo shoots and this got me thinking if everybody thinks they look

bad in photos regardless of their size shape age gender then maybe it has nothing to do with photos at all so I started to collect some data on the images that people struggle with the most and I was able to come up with a handful of re s why people think they look bad in photos and I'm going to share five of those with you today now have you ever heard your voice on a recording or on tape as we used to say back in the day right the same thing that makes you cringe when

you hear your voice on a recording is the same thing that makes you cringe when you see yourself in a photograph essentially your brain is being presented with a reality different to the reality it has come to know the most reason number one why you look bad in photos is that you've been looking at a reflection of yourself your whole life whether that's looking in the mirror as you brush your teeth in the morning checking yourself out in the shop window when you walk by or plucking that Rogue chin hair in the rear view mirror

of your car the ladies know what I'm talking about your brain gets a pretty clear idea of what you look like when you see a photograph of yourself however you're seeing the verse or the flip of that and it can be a little uncomfortable but uncomfortable doesn't mean bad it just means that it's different than what we expected because the majority of us are not symmetrical in our facial attributes just a few weeks ago I had a client that I showed this beautiful portrait to and immediately she said oh my God I look just like

my uncle so I explained to her what I just explained to you and I asked her would it be okay for me to flip the photo so you can see what I'm talking about as soon as I flipped the photo you could see her whole body relax her face relaxed and she said oh yeah that definitely looks more like me to which I responded that's also probably what your uncle sees when he looks in the mirror contrary to what you want to do when you think you look bad in a photo the way to overcome

this is to actually look at yourself in photos more because this helps your brain understand that both realities are true now the second reason why you think you look bad in photos is that you may not resonate with how you're being portrayed for example those of us that are socialized as women we learned pretty early on that our value and confidence is found in our appearance and ultimately our sex appeal so I figured as a budoir photographer I would help women find their confidence through sexy photos and it worked for many but it didn't take

me long to realize that not everyone feels confident the same way and not everyone wants to feel sexy at all imagine my surprise when I realized I was asexual meaning I find sex to be kind of boring and like doing the dishes I would never find my confidence in photos where I'm looking sexy sure I can understand that these photos are technically beautiful but I don't see myself in them so they're uncomfortable because it feels like I'm playing pretend once I was able to lean into my identity however I was able to start to ask

for and create photos that resonated with how I wanted to be seen and more importantly how I wanted to feel this allowed me to relearn what I look like when I'm confident so the next time you find yourself thinking you look bad in photos I want you to get curious and ask yourself the question what specifically am I struggling to accept about this image and does it have anything to do with how I'm being portrayed if you can switch from judgment to curiosity not only are you going to release the shame of looking bad in

photos but you're going to be able to explore your photos and ultimately yourself from A New Perspective so by now you can probably start see that looking bad in photos has less to do with how you look and more to do with how you think and reason number three is no different and this is that you've taught yourself to hyperfixate on your insecurities anytime a client would come in and tell me she hated her stomach or didn't like her arms or her chin I could predict which photos she would struggle with the most whenever you

look at photos of yourself you might find yourself hyperfocusing on whatever your current insecurity is we all do this even us body image Educators a few years ago I was returning home from a trip to Vegas with my creative friends and I was scrolling through the photos when one photo just stopped me in my tracks all I saw was this my stomach suddenly everything that I had heard about what it means to be a woman with a stomach came rising up to the surface some of the most negative things I hadn't heard in a really

long time were just telling me this was horrible in fact I almost deleted the image however because of the work that I do and have done as a body image educator I was able to collect myself and realizing what I was doing I took a deep breath centered myself and once again got curious realizing that my brain just needed me to help in the context I ask questions like who was I with what was I doing and more importantly how did I feel the moment this photo was taken suddenly I could see the photo for

what it was this absolutely beautiful memory of myself and my friends hanging out in the desert and I'm so glad I kept it because let's be honest I look cute as heck now now Dr Wayne Dyer has said when we change the way we look at things the things we look at change this applies to our photos but also our bodies when you find yourself hyperfocusing on whatever your insecurity is in your photo it may look bigger or smaller good or bad because at the end of the day I don't actually know how you see

yourself but what I do know is that whatever you tell yourself you're going to see will be exactly what you do so if you tell yourself I'm going to look bad in this photo yeah you probably will no matter how good the photo actually is now all of the reasons why we look bad in photos have to do with reason number four and this is that we've put some pretty unrealistic expectations on photography and our bodies one of my favorite quotes comes from John C Maxwell who says that disappointment is the gap that exists between

expectation and reality and if you've ever done any traveling you know this to be true but the thing is bodies and photography don't care about beauty standards but we expect them to bodies are just biological organisms responding to a series of inputs outputs and genetics their whole job is to basically get you from point A to point B keep you alive as long as possible and they don't care what you look like doing it photography on the other hand was created to Simply document a moment in time but somewhere along the way we determined that

every single photo of us has to be absolutely amazing but the truth is photography's only job is to capture a fraction of a second like I'm talking 18 thousand of a second guys but we've made these fractions of a second create some really big narratives like I look bad in photos that prevent us from showing up and being present in our lives so today I want to reassure you that sometimes a fraction of a second is just a fraction of a second sometimes a bodies just being a body as a self-portrait artist I've seen my

body in a lot of different seconds and in a lot of different ways and sometimes I look like this you can laugh it's okay and in other times I look like this but the thing is they're just different photos of me they're not good or bad or right or wrong they're just different documentations I've just been taught that one series of these images should make me feel less confident simply because it does not live up to the expectation of what makes a photo or body good now that brings us to our last and final Point

reason number five as you can see from these photos we have unlimited angles yet somewhere along the way we've decided that certain angles are better than others and for this one I actually need some audience participation so if you do have your phone with you pull it out pull out your phones you can turn it on all right we're going to open the camera and I'm going to get you to take a selfie so we got some good studio lights I do anyways anyways find your angle look good beautiful if you came with someone feel

free to be in the photo together you're documenting a moment in time beautiful once you're done with your selfie don't put your phone away cuz we're going to do a second photo this time you're going to take your phone and put it right to your chest and you're going to look down we're still smiling because we're having a good time down here not out here over here and we're smiling beautiful you look amazing now between picture one and picture two if we're being r L honest which picture do we like the most one between picture

one and picture two if you had to post one to your social media today which one are you realistically choosing what now between picture one and picture two did all of your accomplishments and achievements disappear no no between picture one and picture two all of your love passion creativity and Brilliance just vanish no and between picture one and picture two what angle do you think your babies your children your grandchildren and your pets see you at the most two we're not done yet folks and do they love you any less because you have a double

Channer Shadows under your eyes no the truth is nobody that loves us unconditionally actually cares all angles of you are worthy of being photographed simply because you are worthy of being photographed beauty standards have done such a good job of conditioning us to believe that there is a right and wrong way to have a body so it's no wonder we put all this pressure on how we're going to show up in photographs but this pressure is preventing a lot of us from showing up in photographs with and for the people we love the most this

past weekend was the 17th anniversary of my Dad's passing and when I look at these photos do you think I see his double chin or his receding hairline or wrinkles or whatever his insecurity was no I see my dad being my dad your people just want to see you being you so I want this to encourage you to take all the photos of all the moments and just recognize that they're simply different documentations of this one wild magic amazing life of yours and maybe just maybe you don't actually look bad in photos thank you