Taking a photograph used to be a process,

composing a shot, developing the film, printing it.

But for most of us, they're all but instant now.

Thanks to smart phoness, we have high-end

cameras in our pockets at all times.

From selfies to snaps to scenics,

we're taking a ton of pictures.

Last year alone, it was estimated

that humans took an astonishing 1.2 trillion photographs.

So is all this photography changing

how we see the world and ourselves?

To find out, we used special eye-tracking software,

tried to find out why my selfies don't quite look right,

and spoke with researchers at the forefront

of photo psychology, all to figure out

just how photography is affecting us.

[upbeat music]

Let's start with perhaps the most

controversial form of modern photography.

Good?

That's not my angle. [laughs]

I think it's good, so. [laughs]

[Peter] The beloved and dreaded selfie.

I don't really post selfies on social media.

I guess it's a little like, I don't know.

I feel like it's kinda conceited.

But I don't judge people that take selfies. [laughs]

But I don't personally.

[Peter] Taking selfies is different from other photos.

With regular pics, you look at the scene

and think about how the picture looks.

With selfies, we usually focus on how we look.

That's not bad.

Then you save and then you try again. [chuckles]

Maybe try a different filter.

There's a lot of pressure to make sure you get the right

angle and the right lighting and everything.

So it's actually a lot more work than it seems.

I think selfies are sometimes a representation

of what you want to look like,

like the best version of you.

Do you wanna take another one? [laughs]

Yes!

That's not my angle.

Hold on, I have to be here.

There.

That's my angle.

Mm-hmm.

There we go. Good.

Now, when I take a selfie,

which granted, isn't that often,

it never looks quite right to me.

Do the up thing.

People like the up thing.

That's why there are so many filters

and touch-up apps out there,

so that people can get what they post

to be a little bit closer

to what they see in their mind's eye.

So Facetune 2 is the sequel

to what's clearly one of the most popular

touch-up apps out there.

You can do all sorts therefore things with it.

You can thin or broaden your nose.

You can change the size of your mouth.

You can smooth our wrinkles and blemishes and imperfections.

Smooth out some of that.

Smooth that wrinkle action.

What else can I do here?

I'm going to try to see how it changes my existing

selfie to make it more seductive.

Oh, it's definitely plumping my lips.

Ooh!

Oh, no!

All right, let's take that back to natural.

I refuse to subscribe to these beauty ideals.

But even without filters,

why do selfies look off in the first place?

Selfies are not what you actually look like.

I think they're making us more self-critical.

[Peter] Boris Paskhover is a facial plastic

and reconstructive surgeon in New Jersey.

A few years ago, he started noticing

a troubling pattern with his patients.

They would take out their phones out of their bag

and say hey, doc, look how big my nose looks.

They would show me on their phones.

And the phones was distorted to some degree, right?

The proportions were off.

[Peter] To find out just how off,

he teamed up with researchers

at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and Stanford

to develop a mathematical model

that can measure that distortion.

What is shown is that if you were to compare

a photo taken from 12 inches, one foot,

approximate selfie range, to a portrait taken

about five feet, the selfie makes the nasal base

appear approximately 30% larger.

That's right.

If you're taking a selfie with the phones about a foot away,

then your nose will appear about 30% wider

than if the photo was taken

by someone standing around five feet away from you.

One of his fellow researches even designed a program

to reverse the effects of taking a close-range photo.

So I'm about to upload a selfie I just took,

and we'll see what the program

is able to do to reverse that effect.

So you can see in the photo that there is a distortion

in kind of the size of my nose.

And if we start to move the camera back,

my face starts to flatten.

So that little bit of fisheye effect does go away.

So that is what my nose really looks like,

Dr. Paskhover would tell me if I went

into his office seeking rhinoplasty

because of Instagram anxiety.

So even without filters, the distance, and yes,

the angle, of your selfie can distort how you look.

But how do taking and posting selfies make us feel?

The research is still very much in early stages,

but one study out of York University

that looks specifically at college-aged women

showed that subjects taking selfies

felt worse than subjects who didn't.

They were more anxious, less confident,

and felt less physically attractive

in comparison to the group

that didn't take and post selfies.

So what happens to us when we point

the camera at something other than ourselves?

Taking photos has both positive and negative

effects on people's experiences and memories.

[Peter] This is Alixandra Barasch,

a marketing professor at NYU.

She says taking pictures can negatively

impact your memory of experiences

that aren't primarily visual,

like concerts or grabbing a bite to eat.

It's going to really detract from your ability

to hear the music, to taste the food to its fullest.

[Peter] What about doing it for the 'Gram?

Can we still enjoy our experiences

when we plan to share photos of them on social media?

Turns out, not so much.

Instead of staying focused on what we're photographing,

we start getting distracted by what others might think.

We call this self-presentational concern or anxiety.

And this is actually what we find

can take people out of the moment,

make them enjoy the experience less.

Are there any kind of best practices

for people who want to take photos,

want to accentuate their enjoyment of things,

and even want to share them,

but kind of wanna maximize the good and minimize the bad.

I'm not a proponent of avoiding sharing at all costs.

I think that the key thing to do

is to take photos for yourself in the moment,

and then to separate the sharing part of the process

to actually have the sharing happen later on.

[Peter] But there are some positive effects, too.

The act of photo taking itself

can really draw people into an experience,

make them more immersed or engaged,

and that's going to have positive

effects on peoples' enjoyment.

[Peter] And Barasch's research shows

you don't even have to actually

take the photo to reap these benefits.

Just the intent is enough.

When it's more of an observational type of experience,

that's where we see the positive effects of photo taking.

Because you're capturing the scene in a different way,

you're forced to focus on specific details.

[Peter] Okay, so we know that being in the moment

while taking photos has its benefits.

But how does that translate to the real world?

To find out, we met up with Chris Burkard,

a professional known for photos

of spectacular landscapes and extreme sports.

When I'm composing an image, it's as much

about what you're not including

as what you are including.

He wanted to see how taking pictures

for a living might change the way he looks at the world,

so he reached out to Tobii,

a Swedish company that makes specialized glasses

that track the wearer's eye movements.

When you focus your eyes on a particular spot,

it follows your movements and traces a path.

So we met up at The Exploratorium,

a science museum in San Francisco

that's filled with Instagram-friend exhibits.

If you've seen my Instagram,

you know I'm very much not a photographer.

However, we are both gonna use Tobii's

eye-tracking software and capabilities

to see how Chris looks at the world

when he looks around the Exploratorium taking pictures,

and how I look at the world.

That's amazing.

Now it's your turn.

My turn, yay! You're the subject now.

Hooray!

I feel, because what my eyes

are doing is being recorded,

I feel under a degree of scrutiny

that is a little intimidating.

That actually looks kinda cool.

[upbeat music]

Next, we headed to Wired's office to try another test.

We wanted to see how the pros look at photos,

and whether they sweat the details more than amateurs.

So Chris and I looked at a bunch

of different images, including his own.

evalsuate the quality of the images.

And as we did, Tobii's eye-tracking software

followed our points of interest.

This iconic Dorothea Lange portrait

probably showed the biggest difference

in how Chris and I look at photographs.

I'm more like just kinda looking

at less points, longer periods of time.

[Peter] Basically, Chris got more

out of the time he spent with the photo than I did.

Here's a heat map showing what our eyes focused on.

This one's mine.

I mostly looked at the mother's face,

but see all those light green areas.

My eyes were all over the place.

Chris, on the other hand,

had fewer points of interest.

He was more focused, looking at the way

the mother's hand rests on her chin,

the child's hand beside her,

picking out the specific details

in the image that make it so powerful.

We also reviewed results

from the field test at The Exploratorium,

comparing how Chris and I approached this tree trunk.

I don't wanna just walk right up to the first

thing I see and start taking a picture,

because what if the backside's better?

So I walked almost all the way around the tree first.

I just wanna make sure before I take the camera out,

because the moment that I pull the camera up,

I know that I'm gonna be looking at things differently.

When the camera comes up or the phones comes out,

then all of a sudden it's like, okay.

Now I'm thinking about composing the image,

as opposed to just looking at it

and seeing what my eye or my nose

or my hand has naturally gone to.

This is Peter's video.

It seems like when you are trying

to pick an image or pick a subject,

you're experiencing it through the lens of your phones.

I'm hoping to luck into something,

whereas you found something

and then found the best way to capture it.

So in both the field and screen tests,

Chris approached photos more deliberately than I did.

Seemed like his technical expertise

allowed him to cut out clutter

and focus better on specific details.

So what have we learned about how photography affects us?

Well, for one thing, selfies can distort the way we look.

But taking photos can actually improve our moods,

help us remember experiences better,

and make us feel more engaged in the moment,

as long as we're snapping pics of things like landscapes,

not interrupting activities that require our full attention.

So maybe think about that the next time

you pull out your phones at a concert.

And besides, conventional wisdom is right.

Focusing on how many likes we're gonna get on Instagram

makes us feel worse, whether the camera's pointed

at ourselves or at the world around us.

So as good as I look in this shot,

maybe I'll try keeping it to myself.