Walking through the hallway during Spirit Week had been a small adventure of dodging and avoiding being in the background of pictures.

One of the worst things for me is being in the background of a picture.

Imagine a group of girls all dressed as matching cats, making funny faces for the camera, and when the picture shows up in your mini feed you spot yourself in the corner. It’s a candid of you, mid-sentence, squinty-eyed, and double-chinned. It’s the worst possible angle someone could ever capture. Embarrassing right?

The way I see it, there are three embarrassing ways to be caught in the background of a photo.

1.     The Ugly Face Picture: The title says it all. You can be the best looking kid on the block, but in the background of that picture you were just tagged in, you look butt-ugly. And those notifications will haunt you forever.

I find the camera has a knack for sniping loiterers in pictures. The seven chins you don’t really have, the shiny forehead that wasn’t really there, the Alfalfa hairstyle you had for that split second the wind blew; it’s all captures and it’s too late. That picture will be there forever, floating around somewhere on the internet for everyone to see.

2.     The Posed-For-A-Different-Picture Picture: This is when you are posing for a picture for your own camera and the group taking a photo a few feet away captures you in the background.

The photo may look super cute on your own camera, but from the other camera’s picture, you probably just look like a tool.

3.     The Creeper Picture: In my opinion, this one is the worst. This is when you are walking behind a group of people being photographed, and as the picture is snapped, you look directly into the lens.

I’m not really sure why this one bothers me the most, but whenever I’m in a picture like that, I wish I had looked away, it seems it’s just a reflex to look into the camera, even when you don’t want to be in the picture.

Of course there are some exceptions when it comes to background pictures, like making a thumbs up of bunny ears, but other than that, I hate being in a photo I did not intend to be in.

And so, I plan to continue dodging snapping cameras so I don’t come home to find an unexpected Facebook tag.