The answer is simple: Mirrors. There's a difference between your image in the mirror and in photos. The image you see in the mirror is reversed compared to the image that others see face-to-face with you.
When you look in a mirror, what you're actually seeing is a reversed image of yourself. As you're hanging out with friends or walking down the street, people see your image un-flipped. So that mole that you're used to seeing on your right cheek is actually on your left to the person facing you.
In short, what you see in the mirror is nothing but a reflection and that may just not be how people see you in real life. In real life, the picture may be completely different.
Mirrors produce more accurate images than photos because they merely reflect the object and reverse it. There's no quality alteration in a mirror image like there is with a camera, which is affected by angles, lenses, camera quality, distortion, and more.
While mirrors can provide an accurate reflection of our physical features, they can also distort our appearance in subtle ways. Factors such as lighting conditions and the angle of reflection can also affect how we look in the mirror.
Hold two hand mirrors in front of you with their edges touching and a right angle between them like the two covers of a book when you're reading. With a little adjustment you can get a complete reflection of your face as others see it. Wink with your right eye. The person in the mirror winks his or her right eye.
Mirrors physically reflect light and our surroundings. Light indicates illumination, consciousness, knowledge, and other spiritual concepts. Mirrors thus reflect truth in terms of spiritual symbolism. They represent reality.
A selfie captures your face in 2D, but in reality, you're a 3D person. When you translate that into a selfie, your picture is going to look flatter than usual. The proportions will definitely change when you take a selfie versus real life.
The camera lens is not the human eye
That results in all sorts of weird idiosyncrasies. It's called lens distortion and it can render your nose, eyes, hips, head, chest, thighs and all the rest of it marginally bigger, smaller, wider or narrower than they really are.
No, if you're worried about what you look like after you have taken a selfie and flipped it, don't. It isn't accurate, the lighting will be off and everything will look weird. If you are wondering what you really look like, use the camera on the back of your phone.
Paskhover and colleagues explain in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery that the distortion happens in selfies because the face is such a short distance from the camera lens. In a recent study, they calculated distortion of facial features at different camera distances and angles.
Seeing Someone Else In The Mirror
If you look into a mirror and see someone else staring back, this suggests that you don't recognise yourself at the moment. It's a sign of personal changes, usually in your behaviour, that are making you feel like a completely different person.
Relax! You will be relieved to know that when other people look at you in real life, they are more likely to see what you see when you look in a mirror (without the reversal) rather than what you look like on phone pictures.
One major factor is that photos generally show us the reverse of what we see in the mirror. When you take a photo of yourself using some (but not all) apps or the front-facing camera on an iPhone, the resulting image captures your face as others see it. The same is true for non-phone cameras.
Back camera is how you look from other people, and typically shot from distance people normally see you, so perspective will be also likely going to be close.
If you think you look better in person than in photographs, you're probably right. According to new research by psychologists at the Universities of California and Harvard, most of us succumb to the “frozen face effect” in still photos — and it's not very flattering.
Perception and the Mirror Image Effect
One of the primary reasons we feel like we look worse in photos is because we're used to seeing ourselves in the mirror. This reversed image of ourselves is how we've come to recognise our appearance, and when we see a photograph, the differences can be jarring.
The first reason being that when you look in the mirror, you're actually seeing a reflection of your face. that's been flipped. So when you see yourself in a picture, it's reversed from how you're used to seeing your face. So your mind thinks that your Face is more asymmetrical.
What is a Non-Reversing Mirror? A non-reversing mirror, also known as a True Mirror, allows you to see something as though you were looking directly at it, instead of its mirrored image. This is most commonly depicted when you have a t-shirt on in front of a mirror and cannot read it.
According to Live Science, reflected light often scatters in countless directions based on the shape of the object, affected by even microscopic textural features. For this reason, mirrors are very smooth, according to Live Science. This means that they can reflect light without scattering it.
The universal fascination with mirrors was shared by Jews. The widespread use of mirrors by Jewish women can be inferred from the book of Exodus: “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: “You shall also make a basin of bronze, with its stand also of bronze, for washing ” (Exodus 30:17-18).
This is because the reflection you see every day in the mirror is the one you perceive to be original and hence a better-looking version of yourself. So, when you look at a photo of yourself, your face seems to be the wrong way as it is reversed than how you are used to seeing it.
In the case of mirror-gazing, the subject's facial expressions are reflected in the mirror and then perceived and recognized by the subject itself. This dynamic self-reflection can produce, within the subject, recognition-expression or perception-action loops.
If the light rays diverge (spread apart) after reflection, then the image is referred to as a virtual image. If the light rays converge (come together) after reflection, then the image is referred to as a real image.