Why don't I look good in pictures?

Some people don't – and for very real reasons...

I've been taking professional photos for about 30 years. Since I started, I have heard a constant comment. People always say something like "I don't take good pictures" or "the camera doesn't like me." to the speaker that they really look good. Sometimes that's true, but often it's not. Some people don't photograph well – it's as simple as that.

To my knowledge, no one has ever been able to compose a list of physical characteristics that cause someone to shoot well or shoot badly. Game show guru Monty Hall believed the secret was in head size. He insisted that all the hosts on his shows had big heads. Obviously, it worked for him – his unparalleled success attests to that.

Hollywood stars and starlets are very personal about how they are photographed. There are extreme cases, such as actor Alan Ladd. Mr. Ladd was quite short and insisted on cutting trenches in the sets to make it always look taller. When a trench wouldn't, it had stools. Barbra Streisand goes to great lengths to "ensure that only one of her profiles is photographed. Note that she will always have her escort on her right arm – for photographers to shoot her from the left side – her best side, according to the singer-actress.

If you've looked at enough pictures, and seen enough TV and movies, you've been hit with an anomaly or two. Someone who is terribly unattractive looks great in a photo, or someone who is incredibly attractive looks horrible. What are the causes? Does the photographer lack skill? Bad lighting, maybe? The topic of having a bad day? Of course, these things could be true, but there is actually a very real and constant explanation for this phenomenon: dimensions.

We humans live in a three-dimensional world: Front/Back * Left/Right * Up/Down. Since we have stereo vision, we can see these three dimensions. Using geometry, we can see how the dimensions arrived. A straight line is one dimension: front back. To create the second dimension, make a line at right angles to the first line, and do this until you have a square. It's two-dimensional. Now make squares at right angles to the first square until you have a cube - it's three-dimensional. So!

Why don't I look good in pictures?

We Suspect There are More Dimensions

Using the first three dimensions as a guide, if you took a cube and made cubes out of it at right angles, you would eventually have a 4D cube—sometimes called a hypercube, or "tesseract." The problem is, we can't even imagine a tesseract, much less make one. It's all theoretical. Some things in Geometry are hard to grasp, but a tesseract is impossible to grasp.

One of the problems we have in understanding geometry is simply this: A two-dimensional object, such as a square, has absolutely no depth (thickness). This means that it is completely invisible when viewed from the side. But what does all of this have to do with why you don't look good in photos? Simple: people are three-dimensional, and photographs are only two-dimensional.

Every time you lose a dimension, your eyesight is penalized, in and of itself. If I take a frontal photo of a cube, it appears as a square. I can do a few "tricks" to trick the viewer, like making sure there's a shadow showing that the square is actually a cube, or taking the photo at an angle that shows at least one other side of the cube. But no matter what I do, the image will always be a two-dimensional view of a three-dimensional object. Needless to say, there is a substantial difference between a square and a cube. And there is a substantial difference between seeing someone and seeing an image of that same person.

In people, all kinds of things affect how we perceive them. Many of these things are only present because of the third dimension. The distance between the ears and the tip of the nose, the depth of the eye sockets, the distance between the nose and the chin protruding from the face, etc. None of these elements of a person's appearance are necessarily discernible in a photograph, yet they are easily seen in person.

Some people are attracted because of the 3D elements. Others don't depend so much on 3D elements for their attractive appearance. And some people have such a strong feature that is visible in 2D, that any loss of 3D is not very noticeable. Paul Newman, for example, was quite famous for his striking blue eyes. Blue does not depend on the dimension. Try to find a professional photograph of comedian/actor Jimmy Durante that didn't emphasize his notoriously prominent trunk. In a frontal view, he was just a mediocre boy, but when his face was photographed to accentuate his large nose, he became quite unique.

If you or someone you know is not photographing well, take heart. You could try getting a digital camera and photographing frame after frame - each showing just a modest change in head angle. Do not just change the angle from side to side, but also from top to bottom. Looking slightly upward changes everything, as does look slightly to one side. Do it in the open, but not in direct light - like on your porch or on a cloudy day. Do not use flash! If that doesn't achieve the desired result, try the same, but have a prominent light source. You can do this by pointing a light directly at yourself, or by sitting in a darkened room, with only one light source in the room.

The above techniques will help exaggerate the illusion of 3-D in the 2-D medium of photography. Do it enough, in enough positions, and with enough lighting changes, and you might be able to get back those great looks that the 2D camera limitation stole from you. Good luck!