h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It is /very/ easy to look your best in photo booth photos. Simply turn your body 45 degrees to the right, and then look back at the lens, so you are looking across your left shoulder. You look less squashed up and photos invariably come out looking nicer!

Also remember to adjust the seat: My father went in after a mother had taken what we call a "bragging photo of her kid, with the result that dear papa got a nice photo of his tie!
On the second try his glasses was of course tilted and the hair àla "Dagwood"
-B-

Sometimes this doesn't help. I've got loads of photos where the lighting is so poor in the machine, that it looks like I've got two black eyes or my head has been cut off and glued back on.

All I want to know is what's the deal with the increase from £2.50 to £3.00 at the tube stations? What new services do they offer to justify this latest leap in expense? The cost of hiring one-eyed jigsaw making criminals must be in the increase.

All photo booth pictures are awful.
Women look like Myra Hindley and men look like Pete Townsend.(You can actually look like Pete Townsend if you look at your reflection on the back of a spoon.)

Being a photographer there's only one thing I know for sure: photography doesn't lie! So, if looking at your photo booth pictures it seems you are a dishevelled psychotic convict, it is because definitely YOU ARE, but every three years you forget it. Personally, my photo booth photos look fine, always

I must say that photo booths do offer one good service. If you are enjoying a hazy friday night out with a knockout
date, they will always give you proof to show your mates on Monday!

I would imagine the reason for the hike in price is as follows :

The jump from £2.50 to £5.00 is astonishing, whereas the jump from £3.00 to £5.00 is not. This is on the basis that most of the photo booths are going to be converted in the next couple of years so people can submit photos taken to websites, or download them to disks, directly from the booth. As a result, I think you can expect the price to rise further for this added 'benefit' in using photo booths in small, manageable chunks over the next couple of years as we're not intelligent enough to pay too much attention to small increases. The most recent increase is basically so we will get used to the concept.

The worse looking the photo the better of you are.

Reason 1. You do not have to look at it.

Reason 2. Some officious jumped up jerk does have to look at it.

Go on, spoil his/her day.

But it's very embarrasing when you're girlfriend decides to look in your wallet, and sees photos of you on your Uni card and Proof of age card. I mean, here we are, at uni, in our 20s, and we STILL get asked for ID. Don't they believe us? They just say "have to ask everyone, nothing personal", and pour a pint for a 12 year old girl in a tarty dress who thinks she's hard... You know, I think the whole photo-booth bit is just to stop uni students from drinking as to drink you need the photo-card, and the photo-booths are designed to give photos that look nothing like you.

The modern machines always produce terrible pictures. I'm gorgeous (at least that's what my mum always told me) and I always look terrible in photo booth pictures..... I could be Hammer Horror Queen of the decade!

Seriously, the old black and white booths always used to produce better pictures - some of my old pictures taken with about five of us squeezed in, drunk, dishevelled and struggling for air still look good compared to the modern coloured reproductions.

The thing I always find difficult is getting the facial expression right. If I don't smile, the picture looks as if it ought to have a prison number at the bottom. If I DO smile, I look like I'm suffering some sort of agonising facial spasm.

what's even worse - doing a phd and being asked for ID by a first year undergrad!

Will they never accept that we are OVER 18???!?!

I got asked if I wanted an adult or child ticket on the bus.

I'm 23

the maximum age for a child's ticket is 14.

14/23 < 2/3 ie it was assumed I was less than 2/3 my age.

I think that it is either a conspiracy, or the world is stupid.
Conspiracies are often more fun! Thinking that the world is full of billions of stupid people is just depressing.

I am happy in the thought that those people who laugh at me and make jokes at my height today, will appear old before I do. And it is the people who laugh at others who care the most about their appearance.
I am rather glad I am not them, as I pity them in their narrow mindednesses. Even if they can reach things down from the top shelves in supermarkets - I often end up asking gentlemen to do so for me. And yet they are the ones who are out on the pull all the time.

I don't think in terms of stupid people - too esy to become arrogant. I certainly would be unable to do many jobs others do happily, such as managing others or cusotmer sales or more menial tasks. I much prefer mind-bending radiative transfer equations and winds in rotating frames of reference.

I think you've got the right attitude. But if there was even a TINY conspiracy, wouldn't it make you feel better?

teenage girls conspire against anyone who is different. I liked reading books, I was good at maths, I knew the answers to the homeworks, I was different.
It is easier to deal with if only one person is making things bad. a large group - a challenge.
conspiracy?
hmmm.
no
I don't think I would feel better if there were a conspiracy.
not unless there were enough of "me"s to combat it.
and the trouble is, there rarely are, or they have not enough voice compared with the conspirors.

I would feel better if everyone were better people.

but I'm not that wonderful myself, so that is a very very "not-short" order.

I think you are right about how people can conspire in a nasty way to hurt people's feelings. I think a lot of us went through a lot of that at school, and I remember spending a lot of time at night unable to sleep thinking that it was NOT a good idea.
But then, one person can make your life as bad as many people, but what hurts the most is when everyone you care about most says you are wrong - although that usually means that you are.
But you're right, there should be more better people in the world.