How to Pose for Pictures: 10 Easy Rules

Most stiff photos start at the floor. Standing square to the camera with your weight on both feet makes your body look wide and frozen.

Put your weight on your back foot, point your front foot toward the camera, and let that knee bend a little. Your hips turn slightly away from the camera and everything above them relaxes.

Hands hanging at your sides are the number one sign of an awkward photo. Give them something to do: hold your sunglasses, a coffee, your bag strap, your collar, or the door frame.

If there's nothing to hold, touch something lightly — your hair, your face, a pocket. Touch, don't grip. Light fingers look relaxed; clenched hands look tense.

A wall, a pillar, a railing or a doorway instantly makes you look at ease, because it takes the effort out of standing.

Lean with your shoulder or your back, cross one ankle over the other, and keep a little space between your arm and your body so your waist doesn't disappear.

Holding a smile for ten seconds while someone figures out the camera is how you get a fake smile. Movement fixes it: walk toward or away from the camera, flip your hair, turn your head, splash the water.

The person shooting should use burst mode (hold the shutter) and pick the best frame later. One shot in ten is usually the keeper.

It feels strange but it works: push your forehead toward the camera and tip your chin down a little. It defines your jawline and stops the double-chin that comes from pulling your head back.

Turn your face a few degrees away from the camera too. A three-quarter angle almost always looks better than straight on.

Sitting straight on with both feet on the floor looks like a passport photo. Turn your body to the side, tuck one leg under, cross your legs, or pull one knee up and rest your arm on it.

Sit tall from your hips and lean slightly toward the camera. Slouching back away from the lens makes you look smaller and tired.

You don't have to look at the lens in every shot. Looking down, off to the side, or at something you're doing — a map, a menu, a pet — reads as candid and confident.

A good trick: look away, and on the count of three look back at the camera with a small smile. The photographer catches the moment your face is still relaxed.

Where the phone is matters as much as the pose. Low (hip height or below) with the 0.5x lens makes legs look longer and fits buildings or sky behind you. Eye level with 1x is natural and flattering for faces.

From above works for sitting and lying poses, and for a playful big-head look. Keep faces away from the edges of the frame on 0.5x — that's where the ultra-wide lens stretches things.

Face toward soft light (a window, open shade, the hour before sunset) for clear, even skin. Midday sun overhead gives squinting and dark eye shadows.

Or put the light behind you on purpose: backlight at golden hour gives a glow around your hair, and a bright sky behind you turns you into a clean silhouette.

On camera, any space between two people reads as distance. Stand closer than feels normal, lean your heads in, and let one person's hand rest on the other's shoulder, waist or arm.

Then give yourselves something to do together — whisper, laugh, walk, fix a collar — instead of standing side by side smiling at the lens.