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Mental Health

Woman discovers trick to instantly feel better about how you look in photos: 'ZOOM OUT I beg'

"I promise you’ll look back at those photos ... and see the bigger picture."

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25-year-old woman urges people to stop zooming in on photos.

Millennials in the early 2000s were really enjoying the perks of digital photos and cameras, which were relatively new at the time. I know, it's hard to imagine. We had small, physical cameras with memory cards that we'd carry around with us on a night out, even just to the bar. We would take photos all night—hundreds and hundreds of them. They were blurry, poorly lit, and candid. People were always making awkward faces in the background or being shown at unflattering angles.

We didn't care. We posted every single one of them to a Facebook album, tagged our friends, and let them live there permanently. Can you imagine?!

Things work a little differently now. Our online lives are a lot more curated. We don't post every photo we take, and in fact, all of us intuitively utilize a careful vetting process when we take group pictures or selfies. We snap the pic, or a few, and immediately go to look how it turned out. If it doesn't meet the standards of how we want ourselves to look in a public facing photo, it doesn't get posted. Worse, it might be deleted on the spot, the memory of that moment vanishing forever.

 body image, selfies, photography, photos, body positivity, self esteem, self worth, psychology, technology Take me back to when we hardly cared what we looked like in selfies.  Giphy  

25-year-old Emma-Kirsty Fraser has a theory on why we seem to be so much more selective, even flat out disgusted, with pictures of ourselves these days: It's the damn zoom.

In a recent Instagram reel, Fraser posted a photo of herself as the camera zoomed in the parts of her body she tends to over-examine in photos: Her arms, chin, midsection, and legs.

"Image the brainwashing required to get us to see this," she says as the camera bounces around to all the most self-critiqued parts of her body. "Instead of this!"

The camera then cuts to the full photo, of Fraser laughing and chatting with friends. It's a fun and beautiful moment, full of life. It captures a moment in time, friendship, love, and joy. No one in their right mind would see the photo and have any thoughts whatsoever about the shape of her chin or the size of her arms. But we've all been conditioned to hyper-analyze every pixel when it comes to our own body and how we think we come across in photos.

"ZOOM OUT I beg ... I think it’s quite terrifying when you realise how much brainwashing it took to get you to zoom in and criticise yourself in so much detail? Like if you showed 8 year old Emma a photo of herself there’s no way she would zoom in," Fraser captioned the post.

"There is so much more to life than the way your body looks and I promise you’ll look back at those photos (because you’re not going to delete them anymore!!!) and see the bigger picture, not your skin/body/blemishes."

Believe it or not, "pinch zooming" in on photos is a relatively new phenomenon that cropped up within the last 20 years.

Most experts credit (or blame, depending on your point of view) the iPhone with innovating and popularizing the feature around 2007. In a few years, it was available on Android phones as well. It didn't take long from there for us to ditch our Nikon Coolpix cameras and start exclusively taking photographs on our phones, quickly learning that we could spot and delete our double-chin moments before anyone saw them.

(Smartphones with cameras officially overtook digital cameras around 2007 but didn't become completely ubiquitous until about 2012-2013.)

The world, and our body image, was never the same.

 body image, selfies, photography, photos, body positivity, self esteem, self worth, psychology, technology Resist the urge to zoom in on your most sensitive features.  Photo by Antoine Beauvillain on Unsplash  

Fraser's post went viral, racking up 30,000 Likes on Instagram and over three million views.

Commenters were so grateful for the message they so desperately needed to hear:

"the fact i saw this picture and ONLY thought about how it was such a beautiful candid & captured your vibe perfectly"

"At first ... I saw nothing wrong with her. But if this was a photo of ME, tell why would I suddenly see all the flaws?"

"At first, I thought we were talking about the tattoos, the accessories, etc. because I saw nothing wrong with her. But if this was a photo of ME, tell why would I suddenly see all the flaws?"

"I'm 41, I still really REALLY struggle with this, I zoom in on every photo and criticise every flaw and a "bad" photo can bring down my body image for days. But I've started refusing to delete and coming back to photos after a day or so and slowly I'm learning to realise they often aren't as "bad" as my initial reaction would suggest."

"I struggled to see what you were talking about but then I imagined if it was me and I could see what might be perceived as issues. Kinda sad."

Fraser's words really struck a nerve, and she managed to capture a feeling and phenomenon that we all intuitively understand but rarely talk about.

When we look at photos of others, we see the big picture. We see their smile and the emotion of the photo, we take in the moment. We don't nitpick. So why do we do it to ourselves?

Body image and pressure to look "perfect" is about as bad, or worse, than its ever been—in part because the online world is so heavily curated. Real people are quieter and harder to find on social media, and instead we see more and more perfect-looking influencers and celebrities. Photos are easy to edit, touch up, or apply filters to. The real, blurry, awkward photos of the early 2000s are gone and probably never coming back.

But we can fight back in one very simple way. Just zoom out. Don't inspect your belly, your smile, or whatever your perceived flaws are. Enjoy the picture for what it is, a snapshot of a moment in time. Try to view it like a stranger would. And, for the love of God, don't be so quick to delete the memories that you can't get back.

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Pop Culture

What happens after drinking 1, 2, and 3 glasses of wine? 19 viral photos tell all.

Ah, the beauty in winding down.

Marcos Alberti's "3 Glasses" project began with a joke and a few drinks with his friends.

The photo project originally depicted Alberti's friends drinking, first immediately after work and then after one, two, and three glasses of wine.

But after Imgur user minabear circulated the story, "3 Glasses" became more than just a joke. In fact, it went viral, garnering more than 1 million views and nearly 1,800 comments in its first week. So Alberti started taking more pictures and not just of his friends.


"The first picture was taken right away when our guests (had) just arrived at the studio in order to capture the stress and the fatigue after a full day after working all day long and from also facing rush hour traffic to get here," Alberti explained on his website. "Only then fun time and my project could begin. At the end of every glass of wine, a snapshot, nothing fancy, a face and a wall, 3 times."

Why was the series so popular? Anyone who has ever had a long day at work and needed to "wine" down will quickly see why.

Take a look:

Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

All photos by Marcos Alberti, used with permission.

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Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

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Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

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Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

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Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

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Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

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Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

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Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

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Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

assets.rebelmouse.io

Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

assets.rebelmouse.io

Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

assets.rebelmouse.io

Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

assets.rebelmouse.io

Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

assets.rebelmouse.io

Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

assets.rebelmouse.io

Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

assets.rebelmouse.io

Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

assets.rebelmouse.io

Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

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Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

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Photos of person after drinking glasses of win

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This article originally appeared on 11.19.16

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Joy

There are over 30 years between these amazing before-and-after photos.

"It's important for me for my photography to make people smile."

All photos by Chris Porsz/REX/Shutterstock.

Before and after photos separated by 30 years.


Chris Porsz was tired of studying sociology.

As a university student in the 1970s, he found the talk of economics and statistics completely mind-numbing. So instead, he says, he roamed the streets of his hometown of Peterborough, England, with a camera in hand, snapping pictures of the people he met and listening to their stories. To him, it was a far better way to understand the world.

He always looked for the most eccentric people he could find, anyone who stood out from the crowd. Sometimes he'd snap a single picture of that person and walk away. Other times he'd have lengthy conversations with these strangers.

But eventually, life moved on and so did he. He fell out of love with photography. "Those pictures collected dust for 25 years," he says.

Then, a few years ago, Porsz found those 30- to 40-year-old photos and sent them to be printed in his local newspaper.

Peterborough, reunions, Chris Porsz

Chris Porsz and his camera.

All photos by Chris Porsz/REX/Shutterstock.

And remarkably, people started recognizing much younger versions of themselves in his shots. "There was this lightbulb moment," he says of the first time someone wrote to him about one of his photos.

Eventually, he became curious about the people he'd photographed all those years ago, and he decided he'd try to find some of them. It wouldn't be easy — the photos were taken a long time ago, and Porsz didn't have names or contact information for many of the people in them.

But he did find some of them, sometimes in extraordinary ways. "Some were absolute million-to-one coincidences," he says.

Like the time he went out on a call (he's a parademic these days) at 3 a.m., and the man he was there to treat recognized him as the photographer who'd snapped his picture all those years ago. On another call, he asked a local shopkeeper if he recognized any of the subjects in the photos. He did.

Once Porsz began posting about the project online — he calls it "Reunions" — it became easier and easier to reconnect with his former subjects.

Many were eager to recreate the old shots as best they could, like Layla Gordon, who Porsz originally photographed drinking milk in 1983.

time, memories, photos

The child version drinking milk.

All photos by Chris Porsz/REX/Shutterstock.

milk, history, project

The adult enjoys milk too.

All photos by Chris Porsz/REX/Shutterstock.

Others groups, like these schoolgirls, had fallen out of touch. "Reunions," fittingly enough, brought them back together.

schoolgirls, pose, soul mate

Schoolgirls pose for a photo.

All photos by Chris Porsz/REX/Shutterstock.

best friends, intimate, confidant

The adult versions find time for a group photo.

All photos by Chris Porsz/REX/Shutterstock.

Porsz says that his subjects, like this wild-haired couple, were strangers to him 30 years ago. Now he considers many of them friends.

punk rock, narrative, archive

Pink colored hair and mohawks.

All photos by Chris Porsz/REX/Shutterstock.

record, story, account

The color has moved to the sleeves.

All photos by Chris Porsz/REX/Shutterstock.

In all, Porsz has collected over 130 before-and-afters in his new book.

The response to Porsz's work has been more than he ever imagined.

He's personally heard from people all over the world who've been inspired by his project and want to try to recreate it themselves. But beyond that, he just hopes it brings a little warmth and happiness to the people who see it.

"It's important for me for my photography to make people smile," he says. "Because there is so much sadness in the world."

And while the project is finished for now, don't count out the possibility of "Reunions Part 2" somewhere down the line.

"I'd love to meet these guys in 2046 when I'm 94 years old," Porsz says.


This article originally appeared on 11.30.16

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Recommended

15 100-year-old photos that prove beauty is timeless

This album is full of exquisite photographs from around the world

A vintage post-card collector on Flickr who goes by the username Post Man has kindly allowed us to share his wonderful collection of vintage postcards and erotica from the turn of the century. This album is full of exquisite photographs from around the world of a variety of people dressed in beautiful clothing in exotic settings. In an era well before the internet, these photographs would be one of the only ways you could could see how people in other countries looked and dressed.

Take a look at PostMan's gallery of over 90 vintage postcards on Flickr.

Vintage erotica c. 1920

  

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Photo courtesy of Flickr user Post Man

Japanese woman c. 1913

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Post Man

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Maude Ewing Adams Kiskadden an American stage actress c. 1895

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Post Man

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Cambodian girl c. 1906

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Post Man

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Vintage erotica  c. 1913

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Post Man

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Beduinin woman c. 1919

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Post Man

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Japanese woman c. 1920

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Post Man

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Gypsy girl with Mandolin c. 1911

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Post Man

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Luzon Woman c. 1909

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Post Man

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Nepalese lady c. 1905

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Post Man

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Vietnamese woman c. 1908

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Post Man

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Vintage erotica  c.1919

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Post Man

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Actress Anna May Wong  c. 1927

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Post Man

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English actress Lily Elsie c. 1909

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Post Man

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Two women from Bou-Saâda c. 1911

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Post Man

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This article originally appeared on 6.4.19

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