The new normal

A photo lens capturing an object at it’s natural shape has o focal length of 50mm. It sees pretty much what your eyes see. It doesn’t tweak or twist in any way. The lens is often called Normal.

A regular mobile phone lens is about 28mm, also called Wide Angle. It’s perfect for shooting landscapes as it catches a wide perspective. It stretches the picture. But a landscape is forgiving. The photographer doesn’t mind, nor does the object.

Shooting portrait with a wide angle is a different story. As a straight forward portrait stretches to the sides, your nose looks wider. And a profile shot gives you a long nose. 

In this case the object is not as forgiving, it turns out. And the plastic surgery industry is flourishing.

Do you remember when the era of group selfies started, how weird people looked? This was before pretty much every individual went narcissistic and turned the camera towards him/herself. Yes, this was when we realised we could document a fun gathering with everyone in the picture, even the photographer, how amazing!

But to squeeze everyone in we are on different distances to the lens and we all look tweaked and twisted. Distorted. Or should I say, looked, because we have now gotten so used to these distorted pictures we hardly notice it any more. The Wide Angle shot has turned Normal.

But. When it comes to noses on portraits I would say our brains have gone distorted.

I could of course write a whole chapter on the subject selfies. How we have gone from shying away from cameras to being obsessed by documenting ourselves from every angle and in every situation. How even children at an early age learn how to pose in front of a mobile phone. Does this sound healthy?

Back to the nose. As most photos in this time and age are shot by a phone, most pictures are captured by a wide angle lens.  That’s pretty much all we see. Younger people who have never owned a camera don’t know of anything else. All they are aware of is a world in a wide angle view.

Including themselves. Noses captured by a 28mm lens. Distorted. Long. Or wide. And as their phones are jam packed with long nosed selfies, that’s how they perceive themselves. The 28mm lens has distorted their brains. And they have no idea.

That's why the plastic surgery industry is going through the roof. Because that’s where the distorted brains end up. There is nothing (in most cases) wrong with the nose. It’s the new Normal Wide Angle playing an ugly trick with our brains.

I wonder how short of a nose you need to make it look normal on a profil-posed mobile shot. Will the world be inhabited by people who look normal on their selfies but distorted In Real Life? How distorted is that?