A Picture Says a Thousand Words

Sometimes you can determine a lot about the way you come across (for example, your facial expressions and your sitting and standing posture) from photographs.
The reason many people don’t like how they look in photos is that there is something about the photos that doesn’t present them in the best light. Aside from certain people photographing better than others because of the angles of certain facial features or the way their bodies are positioned, most people know that something about the photos—they don’t know what—reflects something negative about them.
On careful inspection of this matter, I did a small study in which I asked people to look at photos of themselves taken over time to determine whether they could spot a pattern in the way they sat, stood, or in the way they presented themselves facially.
To get a clearer perception of people’s posture and facial expression, I had them show me some photos of themselves from different times in their lives. Those who consistently hated their photos regardless of when the pictures were taken said that they just didn’t like the way they looked. When I further analyzed their photos, I could see that their posture and their facial expression (a consistently tense smile or serious frown, for example) may have contributed to their negative views of themselves. They also may not have liked the way they looked because of poor self-esteem.