When cameras take photos, they separate the foreground, middle ground, and background very differently than two human eyes do. This exaggerates the depth difference between parts of your face, making them look disproportionate.
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.
Because of the proximity of your face to the camera, the lens can distort certain features, making them look larger than they are in real life. Pictures also only provide a 2-D version of ourselves.
There's another psychological bias that affects us when looking at pictures of ourselves. It's called the confirmation bias. It's the bias that makes you hate 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. All you have to do is stare at a selfie camera, flip and capture your photo. That's what you really look like.
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.
Sometimes it makes them look better, but the mirror is always more accurate. Unless you're using your phone screen as a reflective surface, in which case you can trust it.
People with aphantasia experience either an inability or severely limited ability to create a mental image. To determine if you aphantasia, try picturing a familiar object or the face of somebody you know well. If you can't create a picture in your head, or if it's very difficult for you, you may have aphantasia.
When you look at yourself in a bathroom mirror, you're seeing an image from double the distance to that mirror. That makes a huge difference in the distortion effect. For those pictures you're going to post on the internet, figure out some way to put a little more distance between you and the camera.
A camera has only one eye, so photography flattens images in a way that mirrors do not. Also, depending on the focal length and distance from the subject, the lens can create unflattering geometric distortions.
We have spent our lives seeing our faces in the mirror, and we have become used to seeing our face that way round. So when we reverse that image, it doesn't look right. No one has a perfectly symmetrical face.
A picture is a truer representation of what you look like. In a way camera, but then again in the mirror your eyes see the true resolution and depth field of your face. Camera because as people saying looking at a mirror image ISN'T actually you. Your mirror image may be more attractive than you or vice versa.
People see the same as the camera sees, because camera designers have chosen it to be that way. We want the camera to show what we would see if we are positioned where the camera is. We could have chosen otherwise.
Play With Poses
But, there are ways to look less uncomfortable than you feel. Move around a bit, play with your sunglasses, etc. It'll make for a more interesting photograph and it'll put you at ease. Posing will get less difficult and you'll come up with a few familiar go-to's over time.
People see the outside appearance, like a picture or mirror reflection. That is you.
A new study shows that 20% of people see you as more attractive than you do. When you look in the mirror, all you see is your appearance. When others look at you they see something different such as personality, kindness, intelligence, and sense of humor. All these factors make up a part of a person's overall beauty.
I found the front camera gives more pleasing pictures than the back one, for example, the pictures taken by the back one often shows my eyes are proportionally smaller. Also the front camera seems to produce completely dark pictures when the lighting isn't good, while the back camera can still produce clearer pictures.
Aphantasia is a phenomenon in which people are unable to visualize imagery. While most people are able to conjure an image of a scene or face in their minds, people with aphantasia cannot.
Aphantasics show elevated autism-linked traits. Aphantasia and autism linked by impaired imagination and social skills. Aphantasia (low imagery) can arise in synaesthesia (usually linked to high imagery). Aphantasic synaesthetes have more 'associator' than 'projector' traits.
Aphantasia is often described as a visual condition, but it's actually multisensory. People who experience a lack of mental imagery can have a reduced capacity to access other mental senses (imagining sound, movement, smell, taste, and touch). For example, I am unable to imagine most senses.
We Expect The Mirror Image
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.