You're taking photos all wrong

Why are you so broken

If you’re new here, welcome. I’m Mia Freedman, this is my newsletter called Babble and I write about all sorts of things. This week, in the midst of a brutal news cycle, I’m keeping it light. If someone forwarded this to you and you would like to subscribe, that would be lovely.\

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If you haven’t tried to take a photo of a teenage girl recently, here’s something to know: It’s impossible. Not because they don’t look great in photos - if only teenage girls knew how utterly beautiful they are - but because they shout at you a lot.
ANGLES! ANGLES! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHY ARE YOU HOLDING THE PHONE LIKE THAT WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU! WAIT LET ME LOOK….

And then they snatch the phone out of your hand and peer angrily at your pathetic work while making faces and noises of deep exasperation.

The shouting continues.

WHY ARE MY KNEES IN THE PHOTO? AND ARE YOU SERIOUSLY IN PORTRAIT MODE? FORGET IT! JUST FORGET IT.

As they walk away, disgusted by your angles, you are left alone to take a long, hard look at yourself and question what choices got you to this point. Mostly, it was the choice to give birth to a daughter 13-17 years previously because if you’re older than 25, everything you know about taking a photo is wrong. In fact don’t even try. Simply know that you are a fool and you may as well just use the phone to hit yourself repeatedly in the face.

Frankly, that would be more pleasant than the absolute caning you will receive for the following reasons:

• You’re holding the phone too high

• You’re angling it down

• You’re framing the person in the middle of the photo rather than towards the bottom with the top half just empty space.

• You’re not taking 20 fast photos so she has lots to choose from

• You’re taking too long

• You’re accidentally in video mode

• You asked her to smile

• You asked her to stop sticking out her tongue and pulling faces

• You asked if you could have one photo with her please, to send to Nana

It’s massively stressful but look, on behalf of my Gen X people I would like to say that we were always told it was more flattering to hold the phone high and angle it slightly down. Double chins or longer legs or something. This is our default photo-taking position and we are not sorry.

The preferred photo-taking style of Gen Z women is entirely different. Overwhelmed by the shouting an unable to understand what I was doing wrong, I recently asked my daughter to take a photo of me so I could see exactly how she wanted the angles and cropping of photos of her to look:

Seriously. I think my face says it all.