Recreate this look
Doorway Robe
Lighting
- Choose the time first. This light is at its best mid-morning or mid-afternoon on an overcast day, bright outside with nothing casting a hard edge, so plan the session around a grey afternoon rather than waiting for sun.
- Work beside a window with the daylight arriving across you from one side, not from behind the camera and not from directly behind you. Side light is what gives a body shape; light straight on flattens it.
- Turn every other light in the room off, including the overheads. One source is what makes the light look considered rather than accidental.
- If the sun does come in hard and direct, close a sheer curtain over it, or pin up a white bedsheet — either turns a hard beam into the soft, wrapping light you want.
- Sit or stand close enough to the window that the light clearly falls on one side of you and falls away on the other. Step further into the room and it flattens out; step right up to the glass and it gets harsh.
- Set the exposure — how bright or dark the picture comes out — off a stand-in, not off yourself: you cannot tap your own body from behind the phone. Put a cushion or a folded coat where you will be, tap the screen on its window-lit side, then drag the slider that appears beside your finger down a touch. Slightly under is the safe direction — a soft shadow can be lifted afterwards and a blown-out highlight cannot.
Posing
- Stand about an arm's length in front of the doorframe rather than flat against it. That gap keeps your own shadow off it and gives the frame a little depth.
- Put your weight on your back foot and let the front knee soften. Standing square with both feet flat is what makes a standing frame look stiff; one leg carrying the weight is what makes it look easy.
- Cross the front ankle loosely in front of the other, or step it a little forward. Either one lengthens the whole line from shoulder to heel.
- Push the hip you are standing on out to the side. That one push is what puts the curve into the line from ribs to hip, and it changes the shape of a standing frame more than anything else on this list.
- Turn the hip nearest the camera slightly away instead of facing it square on. A three-quarter turn suits every figure better than facing straight forward.
- Roll both shoulders up, back, and down, then leave them there. Lengthen the back of your neck as though the top of your head were being drawn upwards, and keep your chest open.
- Keep the arm nearest the camera an inch or two clear of your ribs — a hand on the hip, a thumb hooked in a belt loop, a palm flat against the doorframe. An arm pressed flat against your side and the line of your body merge into one shape in the frame; the small gap is what keeps the line.
- Give both hands a job: gather a hem, hold a lapel loosely closed, lift your hair off the back of your neck, settle a hand against the doorframe. Hands with something to do look relaxed; hands left hanging look forgotten.
- Lift your chin a little and push it slightly forward — forward as well as up, not just up. It feels strange and it looks right, and it keeps the jawline clean.
- Choose where to look before the timer starts, and hold it: down the lens, off toward the light, or back over your shoulder. Hunting for somewhere to look while the run is firing is what most uncertain frames are made of.
- Breathe out as the picture is taken. The shoulders drop, the face softens, and you get caught between two breaths instead of braced and holding still.
- If standing unsupported feels wobbly, put a shoulder or a palm against something solid just out of frame. Leaning takes the balancing away, and a supported stance reads as ease rather than as help.
- Shoot a run of frames and change one small thing between each one — swap which leg carries the weight, turn a shoulder, move a hand. Ten frames with one change each will beat ten identical ones every time.
Coming with free accounts: saving this look to your favourites, dropping it straight into a shoot plan, and pose notes adjusted to your space and comfort level. Until then, the recipe above is the whole thing — print it, or keep it open on your phone. Grab the free checklist and we'll email you the moment accounts open.
