When a corporate photographer arrives at an office to do business portraits, someone will always say, “I don’t like having my picture taken”, “I hope I don’t break your camera lens” or “I never like pictures of myself”.
The reasons for such comments include:
(1) They’ve never had a decent portrait made of themselves.
(2) They’re exhibiting lateralization of emotion.
(3) They’re very self-conscious or self-critical.
Let’s look at each of these three in more detail.
Better Photographer, Better Portraits
(1) This first issue can be easily solved by hiring an experienced portrait photographer and staying away from cheap, amateur-like photographers. You get what you pay for.
A good photographer can produce a portrait that the customer will like. If you know you’ll be getting a good result, you’ll look forward to the photo session.
Mirror Image of Ourselves
(2) We’ve grown up seeing ourselves mostly only in a mirror, so we’re used to seeing our own face laterally reversed. When viewing a photo of ourselves, the face we expect to see has changed because our face is not laterally reversed in a photo. This means our emotional perception of ourselves, at least in a photo, also changes.
The right side of your brain (the fusiform face area) is dominant for recognizing faces and for both perceiving and expressing emotions. This means that the *left* side of the face is more emotionally expressive and we subconsciously pay more attention to the left side of a person’s face.
When we meet with someone, our left eye looks at their right eye and our right eye looks at their left eye. But in a mirror, each eye looks at itself. When looking at ourselves in a mirror, our information gathering and processing are both reversed in our brain.
Any facial asymmetries will always appear exaggerated when looking at a photograph of ourselves. Our “flaws” will appear to be twice as bad as we had originally thought.
Which is the real image of George Clooney? If you’re a fan of this actor then you should have no problem deciding.
We recognize the face we’re used to seeing and a laterally-reversed image always looks odd no matter how small the differences.
Right: A composite using only the right side of his face.
Notice that the face composed of his left side has more expressive eyes and mouth than the composite of his right side.
Critical Review
(3) Many of us are overly critical of our appearance. We see only our flaws – crooked nose, bad hair, uneven eyes, etc. – and we put a disproportionate emphasis on them. If we can see these “glaring” flaws then surely everyone else can, too.
But the (fortunate) truth of the matter is that when someone looks at us, even if they do happen to notice our flaws, they don’t put any emphasis on them whatsoever. Our “up close and personal” appearance isn’t important to them.
British actress Rosamund Pike is very beautiful onscreen and in person:
It’s not until a normal image and reflected image are placed side-by-side that any asymmetries become very obvious:
Since we (almost) never see reflected facial comparisons of the people around us, we don’t really notice their facial flaws. Similarly no one notices or cares about ours.
Right: A composite using only the right side.
Perhaps you can notice that the left-side composite has slightly more expressive eyes and mouth.
Go ahead and hire a corporate or commercial photographer to do your business portraits. With a professional photographer, you’ll look better than you might expect and the finished photo will be the best thing you can do to boost your business image.
