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" When I start to click through the digital photo album on my MacBook, I am knowingly diving headfirst into the rabbit hole. There I am:  December 24, 2003: Christmas Eve at my parents&amp;#039; house. I&amp;#039;m holding a champagne flute, sitting on the sofa, legs crossed. It sounds promising as a composition, but I&amp;#039;m tipping the glass just a hair too far and flashing a dopey smile that says, Hey, I might be overserved, but pour me another!  March 28, 2004: Alone on the beach in California. The backdrop is idyllic; my hair, unfortunately, is not\u2014ashy blond, chin-length, choppy layers. I remember colleagues complimenting me on that cut, appreciating the then on-trend boldness of it. Nonetheless, here on the West Coast, it looks like a poor man&amp;#039;s Meg Ryan shag. Not having the delicate bone structure of America&amp;#039;s Sweetheart, instead possessing what my uncle used to dub &amp;quot;chipmunk cheeks&amp;quot; (pinching them aggressively on occasion), I look less like a chic New Yorker on holiday than like an Ani DiFranco roadie.  July 24, 2009: Las Vegas. I&amp;#039;m slouched in a leather booth, wearing dangling earrings as big as Christmas ornaments, eyes closed, howling with the kind of knee-slapping laughter that sprouts a second chin. It is by definition a candid shot, but it doesn&amp;#039;t effuse the covetable sophistication of one by, say, Henri Cartier-Bresson (the celebrated French proto-photojournalist who ushered in the fashionable wave of unobtrusive picture-snapping, thereby avoiding the self-conscious posing that subjects all engage in when they&amp;#039;re aware a lens has us in its crosshairs). Here, I simply appear batshit. I&amp;#039;ve always thought of myself as someone who comes off better in real life than in photos (or, worse yet, on the dreaded hyper-realized TV screen). Such flagellation may reek of pitiable self-esteem and deep-seated body-image issues\u2014birthed, of course, by our oppressive consumer culture&amp;#039;s perpetually purveyed ideal of physical perfection. But that&amp;#039;s the rub. It&amp;#039;s not like I get up in the morning, look in the mirror, and think: What a dog. In fact, I don&amp;#039;t loathe my physical appearance with the same gusto that I find common among my female friends. I&amp;#039;m packing a pretty healthy amour propre these days, thanks to an adoring husband of six years and to that clich\u00E9d but enduring gospel about your thirties: when self-love and confidence inexplicably wash over you like a baptism. My white-knuckled grip on the myriad insecurities I&amp;#039;ve always harbored about my physical misgivings\u2014thick thighs, thin hair, a potato nose\u2014is loosening.  Not to say I don&amp;#039;t still catch a glimpse of my derriere in a full-length mirror and say to myself, I need to start running more. It&amp;#039;s just that these brief visual mediations don&amp;#039;t have the thrust to unravel me. But when it comes to examining myself in a photo, all the lovey-dovey self-acceptance slinks off without warning, and I&amp;#039;m left cringing at this static avatar I hardly recognize.  John Steinbeck once said, &amp;quot;I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.&amp;quot; When I look at myself in a photo, it&amp;#039;s like hearing my voice on tape, alienating and unrecognizable. Take any Photography 101 class and you&amp;#039;ll learn that distortion will always be a problem when projecting a three-dimensional object onto a two-dimensional surface (this partly explains the &amp;quot;camera adds 10 pounds&amp;quot; phenomenon; and harsh lighting flattens out objects, making them appear bigger). Also, unlike your reflection in a mirror, the camera doesn&amp;#039;t flip the image. A lens shoots you the way others see you. Some of this photo theory may explain why taking a flattering picture is a trying prospect even for the strikingly handsome. When I mention the issue to my gay friend Tyler, a 31-year-old square-jawed Web editor, he openly admits to retouching photos of himself before posting them on Facebook. &amp;quot;I pull up the hairline, take out the dark circles under my eyes, whatever needs a little help.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You do?&amp;quot; I ask, amazed at his purposefulness. &amp;quot;You don&amp;#039;t get it, because you&amp;#039;re married. When I&amp;#039;m choosing photos to put up on Facebook, I&amp;#039;m always thinking, Which ex is going to see these? Or, Is this going to get me laid?&amp;quot;  I can&amp;#039;t really fault Tyler&amp;#039;s logic. The social-network behemoth has stripped away any romantic notion that a photograph is &amp;quot;a moment captured in time.&amp;quot; Online, a picture is now an ad meant to sell an idea of you to the head cheerleader at your alma mater or to those &amp;quot;friends&amp;quot; you&amp;#039;ve never actually met face-to-face. I&amp;#039;m not sure even Tyler&amp;#039;s adept Photoshop skills could help me. When a lens is aimed in my direction, I do awkward things. I throw my chest out like a puffed-up peacock, make sure my neck is straining forward to avoid the dreaded roll under the chin, and instantly straighten my backbone. I act as if I just took successive bong hits and am suddenly aware of my hands, totally at a loss about what to do with them (Holster them in my pockets? Flash a peace sign \u00E0 la LiLo?). The French philosopher Roland Barthes writes about this phenomenon in Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography: &amp;quot;Once I feel myself observed by the lens, everything changes: I constitute myself in the process of `posing,&amp;#039; I instantaneously make another body for myself. In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art. In other words...I do not stop imitating myself, and because of this, each time I am photographed, I invariably suffer from a sensation of inauthenticity.&amp;quot; Perhaps that sensation is what plagues so many of my pictures\u2014I&amp;#039;m trying too hard to control how others see me, contorting myself into something I&amp;#039;m not. That&amp;#039;s partly why I troll street-style photography blogs daily. I find it soothing to gawk at unbridled wardrobe porn worn by real-world\u2014albeit absurdly cool\u2014people when I&amp;#039;m facing a deadline and need a mental breather. But on some subconscious level, maybe I&amp;#039;m searching for insight, studying the nonchalance these industry insiders and chicly dressed city dwellers radiate in their head-turning portraits, almost evoking a sense of grand storytelling primed to be passed on to future generations.  The Sartorialist&amp;#039;s Scott Schuman&amp;#039;s work has a particular sheen to it. A self-taught photographer who counts Arthur Elgort&amp;#039;s Camera Ready: How to Shoot Your Kids as his informal textbook, he&amp;#039;s known for snapping the well-dressed on the fly\u2014from spectacle-making editors to dapper Milanese men-about-town\u2014in soft, natural light, posting it all on his heavily trafficked blog. Schuman insists that it&amp;#039;s our own vanity that makes us shudder when scrutinizing photos of ourselves. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not that people aren&amp;#039;t photogenic,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s just very hard to find a photograph where you think, Oh, yeah\u2014that&amp;#039;s how I want people to see me. The thing that&amp;#039;s trickier with women, especially if they&amp;#039;re not just typical beautiful girls or if they&amp;#039;re older women or slightly bigger, is fear,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;You know, there are bigger girls that I really tried to get a good photo of, but they seemed so\u2014what&amp;#039;s the word?\u2014suspicious. Their own suspicion kept them from creating a good photograph.&amp;quot;  But this is sort of like realizing that water&amp;#039;s wet, isn&amp;#039;t it? Women who aren&amp;#039;t genetically blessed with a size-2 bod and winged cheekbones are predictably going to feel trepidation about the camera translating them into an inert object for the sheer purpose of being viewed (and therefore judged) by others. If only photos came with footnotes: This lass also has a great sense of humor, speaks three languages, and volunteers at the animal shelter on weekends! And yet, you&amp;#039;ve got to give it to Schuman\u2014the guy proves that when a skilled hand is behind the shutter, there&amp;#039;s a fighting chance that more than uncut aesthetics will surface. Study his blog and you&amp;#039;ll find both women and men who are no traditional beauties but exude an intangible kinetic charm. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not so much about your nose or your hair,&amp;quot; Schuman adds. &amp;quot;If you really look at the photographs on my site, a lot of the people who look the best are the people who have a certain amount of grace.&amp;quot;  He&amp;#039;s right. I think of a worn-edged picture of my parents from 1968, taken at the Wort Hotel in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on their wedding day. They were college kids\u2014both just 19 and broke, I&amp;#039;m told. Yet there&amp;#039;s an innate elegance about the way they&amp;#039;re holding hands, not aping for the camera, no artificial smiles. It&amp;#039;s the kind of quiet, poetic moment that would make any wedding photographer, sweating over what angle to shoot the bride and groom&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;spontaneous&amp;quot; smooch, weep with envy. Despite my terrible track record, I have a wedding photo of my own that&amp;#039;s similarly blissfully nostalgic. It&amp;#039;s a black-and-white, taken by a friend of mine with a vintage Leica, and my dad is laughing, twirling me around the dance floor in my strapless floor-sweeping dress. My eyes are closed but I&amp;#039;m smiling too, looking pretty and unaffected. When I glance at it mid-workday, I get the urge to pick up the phone and call him. It&amp;#039;s a little blurry and not cropped quite right, but it&amp;#039;s a potent tangible memory that I think my future kids might like to frame. ELLE&amp;#039;s style director, Kate Lanphear, has a unique vantage point in that she knows what goes into creating a fantasy-laden glossy pictorial and what it means to sit as a subject for this new wave of road-warrior, style-obsessed shutterbugs. The New York Times recently dubbed her &amp;quot;a fashion blog heroine,&amp;quot; and she is constantly snapped while going to and from fashion events on various continents. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m perplexed by the whole thing,&amp;quot; she says earnestly over lunch. &amp;quot;If you actually break it down, I&amp;#039;m literally in a pair of black jeans and a T-shirt almost every day.&amp;quot;  Today is no different. As usual, she&amp;#039;s sans makeup and wearing faded black denim, an oversize blazer, and a sleeve of studded bracelets. Still, sitting next to her, I easily understand why her highbrow-rocker alchemy elicits comments from blog fans like &amp;quot;From the hair to the jewelry, she always gets it right.&amp;quot; Surely, she must appreciate what she&amp;#039;s projecting in these images, exuding coolness from every pore. &amp;quot;No,&amp;quot; she says, almost chuckling when I pose the question. &amp;quot;In the beginning, I saw one or two pics, but now I can&amp;#039;t look anymore. On some level it&amp;#039;s definitely very flattering, I guess&amp;quot;\u2014here she pauses for a moment\u2014&amp;quot;but I&amp;#039;m still highly uncomfortable with it. I&amp;#039;m paid to be behind the camera, not in front of it. I&amp;#039;m not a model. I have no idea what my best angles are. I have fat days. And so it&amp;#039;s like this wash of anxiety comes over you, even though I realize it&amp;#039;s part of the industry now.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s tempting to throw up the white flag here. If someone like Kate, whose pictures are fawned over, doesn&amp;#039;t want to be represented by the visual version of herself, who does? No, thank you, world: I&amp;#039;ll just see you later, live and in color\u2014and we&amp;#039;ll have an unself-conscious good time.  Click here to see Global Street Chic  Click here to see Street Chic Daily "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/life-love/a9087/cringing-at-candid-photos/>