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Inverted image experiment

Sa • Mon, Jan 18

Have you ever noticed that the selfies you take on your iPhone look a little, well, "off"? Does your face look familiar in your selfies, but not exactly how you think it should look?

There's a reason for that.

When we look in the mirror, we're seeing an inverted image of ourselves. The image displayed in the mirror is opposite of what everyone else sees. We have lived out whole lives only seeing our faces inverted and opposite in mirrors, so we think that's what we look like. However, when you take a selfie on your normal camera app, the camera does not invert the picture- it's showing you what you *actually* look like, which is opposite of what you're used to, so you think the picture looks weird or "off". Has this ever happened to you?

Have you noticed that in other apps, for example, Snapchat, the selfie picture is inverted and therefore displays a picture that you are used to seeing in the mirror, which makes you tend to like that picture more?

Take a minute to try it! Take a selfie using your front camera on your normal camera app on your phone. Then, take a picture using the snapchat app. Do you see a difference? Does one picture look normal to you, while the other looks weird? Post the pictures below and comment on which one you like best!

Here are my pictures, on the right is the picture I am used to- it's the one I took with the snapchat app. On the left is the one that I think looks weird, the picture I took with the normal camera app.