Lens distortion and body dysmorphia: Are selfies causing more people to get nose jobs?

 

 

While "selfies" may not be the most common use of cameras for those of you reading Imaging Resource, it's nonetheless the case that a new video by Vox about why selfies can make your nose look bigger intersects with camera technology. The same phenomenon behind selfies making your nose look bigger can also help explain why wide angle lenses are typically not a great choice for capturing portraits of other people.

From 2016 to 2017, the percentage of people who came into a plastic surgeon's office seeking help for looking better in selfies went up from 42 percent to 55 percent. That's a significant increase and it brings up an interesting discussion on how different lenses can capture a person's facial proportions and overall appearance very differently. You may not be concerned about selfies and how your own nose looks, but if you're a portrait photographer, you ought to be concerned with how your subject looks and your lens selection can certainly play a role in how a person's face appears in a photo.

So what's at play here? Primarily, all else equal, it's the distance between the camera and the subject. A person's face looks very different from five feet away than it does at a foot away, as you can see in the video below. In fact, if you'd like to experiment with this, head over to Princeton's Perspective-aware Manipulation of Portrait Photos study.

(Via Vox)