Portrait Photography How To

Here’s Why You Look Different in Photographs than You Do in the Mirror

Shutterbug Staff | Feb 4, 2019

Photographer and model Sorelle Amore is an expert at getting people to look their best in photos. We’ve featured many of her tutorials with posing tips and tricks the pros use to shoot better portraits.

In the below video, Amore flips (pun intended) that advice around to try to answer a common conundrum: why you look different in photographs than you do in the mirror. In fact, most people will probably say they look better in the mirror than they do in photos.

“People come to me and they say, I do not like photographs of myself, I prefer to see myself in the mirror,” she says. “Is there something psychological happening which is messing with the truth?”

In the clip, Amore talks about several things that are a factor in the disconnect between the mirror and photos, including the disorienting flipped effect:

#5 Mirror Is a Flipped Reflection of You

#4 The Mere Exposure Effect

#3 You Have Immediate Control of the Mirrored Version of You

#2 Instastory/Snapchat Filters Are Not Your Best Friend

#1 Most People Believe They Are More Attractive than They Really Are

Watch the clip and then check out links below the video to three more portrait and posing advice tutorials from Amore that should help you and your portrait subjects look better in photographs.