Yes—photos can look quite different from real life for several reasons.

A big one is lens choice and camera distance. Phone cameras are usually fairly wide-angle, so if you’re close to the camera (as in a selfie), your features can look stretched or distorted. This is really a perspective effect caused by shooting distance, not just the lens itself. A more “normal” view is often associated with around a 50mm lens on full frame.

Another factor is that human vision is not the same as a single photo. We see with two eyes, giving us stereoscopic depth, while a photo is flat. Our brain also combines information dynamically, helping us perceive a scene with balanced brightness and detail in a way cameras often can’t without HDR or editing.

Lighting, exposure, white balance, color shifts, and filters can also change how skin, facial shape, and overall appearance look in a photo. Editing can exaggerate this even more.

So beyond mirror reversal, the main differences come from perspective, focal length/field of view, the loss of 3D depth, and camera processing.