Mirror image

We live in a confusing world... A very confusing one indeed... Ever wondered why we like to take our selfies so often??? Why is it that some people pose the same way over and over again??? Why do we get puzzled to see our own pics sometimes and think, "do I really look like this?!?" A viewer's paradox if you may.

So, a few months ago I took a few selfies at the mayfield lavender farm amidst the flowers as I was by myself. While I posed for the selfies, I quite liked the angles, the pose and the frame, but as soon as the picture was taken and I checked it again in my image gallery, they looked different, as in not as good as I had framed them... Disappointed at first, I started to play around with the angles again and take a few more pictures, but again, the images looked alright whilst live in the front camera view, but not after clicking it. I thought it was the camera or perhaps I actually looked the way it showed me after clicking, rather than the live front camera. This has happened plenty times before too, almost every single time I took selfies solo or with friends (and mind you I don't generally take a lot of them)... However, it was only now that I was a bit more curious to look into why this was so... Well, what I am going to tell you is something quite obvious I suppose, and you may already know (kudos to you if you already figured it out).

And here is the truth, we never actually see ourselves the way others do...And by that I mean literally, not just mentally. We see ourselves by the means of our own reflection in the mirror or other reflective surfaces. The only other way is if someone takes and shows a picture of us... However, guess what, the mirror does not ever show us how we actually appear to others. We see our mirrored reflection, with left as left and right as right, whereas everyone else see our true appearance, which is opposite to theirs... And the two are never the same because we are never symmetrical in our features. This is why more often than not our own photos look different to us than what we perceive ourselves to appear as. And may be this is why people can't get enough of their selfies. It puzzles and amuses them how different they can look in the photos. Some even master the art of taking selfies... They find a pose, the so called "camera pose" that suits them best or accentuate their looks and stick to it. We can't recognise ourselves in the pic we just took at times... It is quite daunting at times how much better or worse some pics can look. 

We can never really look at ourselves the way every other thing on the planet can. That is something we will never be able to do... And that is quite unfortunate cause I quite prefer my mirror image over the images taken in the camera sometimes.

Oh well... you work with what you have I suppose :)