Posing
How to pose for selfies without looking like a selfie
Hold the phone slightly above eye level and further away than feels natural, use the back camera with the timer where you can, turn your face thirty…
Posing
Hold the phone slightly above eye level and further away than feels natural, use the back camera with the timer where you can, turn your face thirty…
In short: Hold the phone slightly above eye level and further away than feels natural, use the back camera with the timer where you can, turn your face thirty degrees from the lens, and find a window. Arm's length with the front camera is the whole problem.
At arm's length the lens is around forty centimetres from your face, so your nose is proportionally much closer than your ears and photographs larger. Phones also use a wide lens on the front camera, which exaggerates it further. Neither is a comment on your face.
Most phones show a mirrored preview and save the unmirrored file, so you compose one face and receive another. If your selfies always feel wrong the instant you take them, this is why. Most cameras let you fix the saved orientation in settings — pick one and stay with it.
A held smile is visible as held. Exhale first, think of something specific, and take the frame just after the reaction rather than during it. Burst mode is the honest tool here: shoot ten and keep one.
Many phones apply skin smoothing to front-camera photos by default, which produces a face that looks retouched and flat at the same time. Find it in the camera settings and turn it off before deciding how you photograph.
Distance. Someone else stands a metre or two away; a selfie is taken at forty centimetres, which enlarges everything nearest the lens.
The back camera with a timer, whenever the situation allows. It has the better lens and it forces you to stand further away.
Phone slightly above eye level, face turned about thirty degrees from the lens, window light in front of you.
Next step
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