What kind of photographer could make Kerry Washington look bad? Or turn an idyllic beach shot into a haunting nightmare? Make a candlelit dinner into a memory you want to hide?
Boyfriends and husbands.
Women across TikTok and Instagram have been sharing their partners’ not-so-faithful renditions of them. Felt pretty, then I opened my husband’s camera roll, many of them say. Other women contrast the offending shots with the much more cinematic photos they take of their partners. The photographer may be a boyfriend, a spouse or someone else, and the setting may be on vacation, at home or standing in front of the Eiffel Tower at golden hour.
Perfect light and pose notwithstanding, these men are proof that affection does not always come with an eye for angles.
Kian Lawley, who posts comedic and lifestyle content and lives in Los Angeles, has learned the hard way that many people already have the photograph mentally mapped out before handing over the phone: the pose, the background, the way the light falls just so.
His biggest mistake, he said, has been improvising.
“Listen to them,” Mr. Lawley, 30, said with a laugh. “Don’t try and do anything that you think might be better.”
Mr. Lawley admits candid photography is where he struggles most. Those spontaneous moments he finds authentic — someone laughing, eating or fixing their hair — are exactly the moments that get him in trouble.
Blinks. Strange faces. Windblown hair.
A recent trip to France drove the point home. The backdrops, including Paris streets and the South of France, were postcard-perfect. Yet somehow he still botched the photos he took of his fiancée, while the ones she took of him looked “like they were shining in gold,” he said.
Though the worst photos never see the internet, Mr. Lawley and his fiancée’s sister sometimes laugh privately at them. The merely bad ones might appear, but only with the subject’s approval.
“Try your best,” he said. “Don’t take it too seriously. At the end of the day, at least you know your photos will come out good, because they’re in the hands of your wife.”
Professional photographers say the problem is not love but geometry: Bad angles are a common culprit.
Jenn Ackerman, a Minneapolis-based photographer, warns against the classic mistake of holding the phone too low and shooting up toward the chin. Few faces benefit from that view.
Lighting is another issue.
“If the light looks bad in real life, it will look bad in the photo,” she said, suggesting that subjects face the light rather than stand with bright sun behind them.
The stakes have also been raised. In an era when photos are often destined for public viewing, what counts as good enough has changed.
The actress Kerry Washington recently posted about the phenomenon, sharing a series of images on TikTok that included a video of her asleep on a boat, an array of blurry images and one in which she appears to be half asleep holding an “I Voted” sticker. “Felt cute,” she wrote, “then I opened my husband’s camera roll…”
Amateur shutterbugs should keep the imperfect photos anyway, Ms. Ackerman said: “You’re going to look back and appreciate that moment,” she said.
Even professionals sometimes miss.
Her husband, Tim Gruber, who is also a photographer, said that when he rushes to take photos of his wife, he sometimes ends up with uninspired snapshots.
“If you rush, or if you don’t slow down and actually think about your composition or the light,” he said, “it basically becomes documentation of, ‘OK, my wife was there.’”
His advice is simple: Take more photos.
“It just increases your odds of getting something your partner will like,” he said.
Another couple has developed a system. Or perhaps a training program.
When Jon Bouffard takes photos of his wife, Alexandra Madison, the instructions can arrive with the precision of an architectural brief. The pair have poked fun at this dynamic in social media posts, such as one TikTok video that has more than 900,000 likes and 6,200 comments.
Sometimes Ms. Madison will position him exactly where she wants to stand for a photo, then take a reference shot herself. She points to the three-by-three grid lines on the phone screen and explains where she plans to be.
“See how I’m on the left side of the screen?” she will say. “Make sure I’m between this box and this box.”
It is a quick primer on the rule of thirds, or placing subjects away from the center of a shot.
Mr. Bouffard is still trying to understand the squares.
“Do you personally understand the grid?” he asked her during a joint interview with The New York Times. “Because I’m like, what are you talking about?”
For Ms. Madison, a photograph is a small piece of art. The framing matters. The horizon should be straight. A loose strand of hair or an awkward pose should be corrected before the shutter-release button is tapped.
Mr. Bouffard said the list of responsibilities can feel a bit extensive.
“Am I supposed to focus on the framing,” he asked, laughing, “or what?”
“All of it,” Ms. Madison replied.
There is also the matter of volume.
Mr. Bouffard said he is often asked to take dozens of photos in quick succession.
“I feel like everyone asks me to take a hundred photos of the same thing,” he said.
Ms. Madison corrected him immediately.
“You can’t take a hundred photos of the same thing,” she said. “I want a hundred photos. And I need variety.”
Mr. Bouffard’s advice to husbands and boyfriends everywhere is simple: Suck it up. This is never going to end.
As for the photos he takes of his wife, Mr. Bouffard keeps the review process simple.
“That’s love, baby,” he said. “You look good. Every photo looks amazing.”
Ms. Madison does not find this especially useful.
“I don’t care what you think,” she said, laughing.
Which, perhaps, explains why the instructions keep coming.
Mark Walker is a Times reporter who covers breaking news and culture.
The post Felt Cute, Until They Gave Their Husbands the Phone appeared first on New York Times.
