I have to admit that I really dislike having my picture taken.  They never look right to me.  I got to wondering why this might be.

Eventually, I realized the problem is that there are only two ways individuals have of seeing what they look like.  One is in photos (or other types of artwork) and the other is in a reflection.  The difference between these is that photos show how you look to other people, while the reflection is how you look to yourself.  So I started wondering if I would be happier if the portrait was actually taken of a reflection.  The other option would be to flip the portrait using photoshop.  Below are the results:

 These two images are the reflection and the reflection flipped.

These two are the straight photo and the photo flipped.

I think the results would have been even clearer if my hair had been freshly combed (with a strong part).  That said, I prefer both the reflection and the flipped photo to their counterparts.  Try it yourself and see what you think.  However, you might want to recruit a friend (like I did) because taking self portraits (especially in a mirror) is really hard.