That awkward feeling when you realize that your efforts to be fun and spontaneous are neither fun nor spontaneous. The little eyebrow lilt at the very end says it all.
For the past several years US Football broadcasts have done this same thing on purpose. Instead of a photo of the player being discussed they have a creepy video. I never understood who thought it looked good. People are completely awkward when posing for photos.
hahaha! i love this. Posing for photographs is a tremendously antiquated notion.
15 seconds into it I was all douched up.
What are they doing wrong? Theyāre just posing, which is pretty much expected when your picture is being taken. If you donāt pose, then the odds of the pic being blurry and subjects having closed, mid-blink eyes or weirdly deformed talking-mouth (especially both of these combined) go way up.
just like everyone posing, shortly after i started playing the video i got tired of sitting still long enough to watch it. how boring. not even the music could make it better.
On Flickr Iāve used the tag āinadvertent videoā for short videos that were solely the result of me thinking my camera was in photo mode.
I guess that the animated photos features in the Harry Potter films have jaded me on this sort of thing. That and animated gifsā¦
Thank you, makes me feel okay about the fact that it got yoinked from YouTube before I could watch it.
That awkward moment when the Boing Boing video you wish to watch is unavailable, due to copyright. 
Weirdā¦I did exactly this as an artwork called āVideo Portraitsā from 2006-2008. The videos have been show in art galleries and museums internationally. I created over 300 portraits at different events.
Not to self-promote, but letās give credit where it is due. Hereās 4 different videos from the āVideo Portraitsā series. Check them out.
Is that Trace Beaulieu at the very beginning? Score!
You should give credit where itās due too.
Fuck Chris Pavey.
Also, they did a super-long (about five whole minutes) video portrait in Koyaanisqatsi.
And I fully expect someone did it before you as well (although tech means probably not that long before), and many more people did it as a joke or something without displaying it.
In fact the Freaks and Geeks title sequence is basically a play on this idea and that was done in 2000.
It is an idea that is pretty obvious as soon as you have cameras able to take video because it breaks down the illusion cast by that little posing ritual.
Posed photos look silly. Itās an antiquated notion that hearkens back to the 19th century, when people were still sitting for portraits as if they were going to be painted.
Just take pictures of your friends acting normally, and if someone insists that you āposeā for a photo, give a nice normal smile and move on.
Trying to pull a face for a picture is douchey and weird.
Iām not saying you have to pull weird duckfaces to make good pics. But, for one, not all regular digital cameras capture motion very well (especially in low light). I have some run-of-the-mill Canon and if the subjects are moving around laughing when I take the shot, it can get badly blurry/grainy. Itās much better if they stop moving and smile while I snap the shot (therefore posing). Yes, some people will be more nervous and self-aware because of it and some make some funny poses, but itās either that or a fuzzy mess.
Also, you must be surrounded by camera owners who have more aesthetic sense than the ones I get, because when my friends/family send me their āspontaneous action shotsā, itās inevitably a barrage of pics of my face mid-chewing, mid-talking, up-nostrils, closed-eyes, etc. I guess I must be a gesticulating monster when casually hanging out because I rarely get a decent, normal, relaxed smiling picture of myself unless I PLAN it that way (therefore posing). BTW I hate posing and I hate having my picture taken, but if one must turn the camera my way Iād rather look like a human being.
I agree that a good spontaneous shot beats any self-aware posing photo, but the fact is most people snapping pics donāt bother making a proper quality control after the fact. Knowing this, when I take photos, I tend to take a bazillion shots and then only keep/share the very best ones. That means I scrap about 80% of all pics I take.
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