 So this is a friend of mine that I took a photo of a couple weeks ago When she saw the photo on the back of her camera, she immediately was like, oh, I don't like it Would you please erase it? She's like Duncan, please. Oh my god erase it kill it and of course I was like why Because look, I mean there's nothing wrong with this image Turns out I think what was wrong was her perception of the image So let me let me dive into this a little bit as a as a photographer for Ted and other places I have seen this time and time again. We've seen people see photos of themselves say, oh, I don't like that for whatever reason But everybody else in the room will like it. Well, I dug into this a little bit I talked to lots of the scientists that I have access to thankfully and Started asking questions now We know from perceptual science that a lot of what we actually perceive the world to be is pulled from memory Right when you look at a Ted logo you glance at it You know what the Ted logo looks like because you've probably seen it a dozen times something pulls out of memory That's what you perceive right now. Let's think about ourselves. How do we perceive ourselves? What is the map that we use to view ourselves? Well, it's like what no other camera sees It's a mirror in your bathroom at arm's length reversed So that's a very personal view that you're the only person that has this view in the world Right whenever somebody takes a photo of you it does not match that in fact I would go so far as to say you fall into the uncanny valley. So what's the uncanny valley? Well, this is this is something that the Hollywood folks would know. Well, so if you've ever seen Toy Story, right? The character Woody, you know, he's he's human-esque, but he's not too human and we accept him as a character He's funny. He's he's great. He's Tom Hanks's voice coming out Well, Tom Hanks, but lent his voice to another character the guy in Polar Express Well, that character was so closely rendered to be a human that something in our brain kicks into overdrive And we look at him and discriminate him a little bit more carefully than we do Woody and all of a sudden He's not quite right. He's not quite human. He's not quite real and to some people. He even looked a little dead Right. So my theory though, I'm not a scientist I'm just a photographer is that when we see a photograph of ourself it looks almost right, but not quite And so therefore we feel a big sense of rejection That is the theory, right or not? We'll see maybe somebody will test this But what I can do right now is tell you one thing If you see a photograph of yourself you have that reaction that I don't quite like this But everybody around you says it's a great photograph trust your friends. They know what you look like more than you do