“My Phone Gallery Vs My Husband’s”: 86 Men Who Had One Job And Blew It

Earlier this year, Scandal star Kerry Washington gave the internet a moment of pure, unfiltered relatability. The video, captioned “felt cute, may delete later,” begins with a glamorous shot of the actress drinking coffee.

In a lighthearted callout of her husband, Nnamdi Asomugh, the video, overlaid with text that reads “felt pretty then I opened my husband’s camera roll,” proceeds to show a lineup of candid and close-up pics of Kerry. Some show her sleeping, some are selfies she sent him as updates—all are pretty amusing; none are very flattering.

It wasn’t a complaint, just a quick, familiar laugh, and it landed hard: the video racked up 1.4 million views, and in the just over 9,700 comments, plenty of women recognized the same struggle of trusting their own husbands with a camera. Their replies were arguably just as funny as the original post, ranging from @amysahabdool’s “nothing keeps me more humbled than my husband’s camera roll” to @canpor’s “So it’s every husband.”

What stands out among them is how universal the experience is. In one comment, for instance, commenter @raee.allday realized, excitedly, in all caps, that she now had something in common with Kerry Washington herself. And it’s that relatability that, as Brenda Chuinkam notes, “pushed the moment beyond just a celebrity joke.”

As it turns out, Kerry’s moment is just the famous tip of a much bigger iceberg. “Felt Cute Then Opened My Husband’s Camera Roll” now has around 13.7 million videos on TikTok. Meanwhile, women across social media have been posting their own partner photography fails in countless other posts and threads. And the comments they receive have added to the running joke.

For example, over on Threads, two posts, from @ola_aloolao and @liza.lense, have amassed an array of the most cringeworthy, ill-timed, or downright baffling photos husbands have ever taken of their wives. We’ve included some of the most hilarious ones in this list, but a few themes keep popping up.

There’s the classic obscured face. There’s the awkward, unflattering angle, and the distorted perspective that comes with it. There’s the poorly timed shot and the senseless framing, the kind that makes you wonder what he was even aiming for. There’s the bad lighting, and the less-than-flattering expression caught at exactly the wrong moment. And then there’s the catch-all category: the glitches, the blurry or out-of-focus shots, and just a general lack of awareness and attention to detail.

Each is the exact kind of photo you hope your husband doesn’t pull up when a colleague says, “Can I see a picture of your wife?”

The comedy of these posts is really driven home through the “photos in my phone gallery vs. my husband’s phone gallery” theme of @liza.lense’s thread. A twist on the classic “expectation vs. reality” meme format, one gallery is curated, well-lit, and Insta-ready. The other, apparently shot by someone who has never once considered an angle, is a chaotic archive of nostrils, mid-blink disasters, and photos that seem to have been taken by someone actively trying to avoid capturing your face.

The juxtaposed photos might show the same woman, sometimes only minutes apart, but they show two wildly different outcomes. It all just depends on who is holding the phone.

So what should you do if you’ve been bestowed the responsibility of photographing your partner? First, cut yourself a break. Even the memory cards of professional photographers are sure to house a few duds.

But if you’re serious about upping your game, a New York Times article suggests concentrating on the following:

1. Choosing a flattering angle: Holding the phone too low and shooting up toward the chin is a common misstep, since it’s rarely a flattering angle for most faces.
2. Paying attention to lighting: Bad lighting in person will translate to a bad photo, so it’s best to have your partner face the light source rather than positioning it behind them.
3. Taking your time: Rushing can lead to uninspired shots. Without slowing down to consider composition or lighting, a photo becomes little more than proof that your partner was there.
4. Taking more photos: This simply raises the odds of capturing one that your partner will actually like.

If you’re on the other end of the camera, you could take a leaf out of married couple Jon Bouffard and Alexandra Madison’s book. For Alexandra, NYT reporter Mark Walker writes, a photo is a small work of art, where the framing, the straightness of the horizon, even a stray strand of hair, all get corrected before the shutter clicks.

To this end, they’ve developed a system that Walker likens to a training program, with Alexandra providing highly detailed instructions before Jon even takes the photo. Sometimes Alexandra sets up the shot herself first, positioning her husband where she wants to stand and taking a reference photo. Then, in a quick, informal lesson in the rule of thirds (aka keeping the subject off-center), she uses the phone’s grid lines to show him exactly where she should be framed in the final shot. And voilà.

Beyond that, Jon’s wry advice to all the husbands and boyfriends out there is simple. “Suck it up,” he says. “This is never going to end.”