Recreate this look
Chin-on-Hands
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
- Lie face down on the bed with your body running along it rather than across it, so the whole line of you has room in the frame.
- Prop up onto both forearms and lift your chest clear of the bed. Everything in this family depends on that lift: lying flat goes shapeless, propped up lengthens the back.
- Slide your forearms far enough forward that your shoulders sit above your elbows rather than in front of them. That is what stops the shoulders creeping up around your ears.
- Draw your shoulder blades gently together and down your back. It softens the shoulder line, opens the chest and is the difference between a relaxed frame and a scrunched one.
- Stack your hands and rest your chin on the backs of them, or fold your forearms and rest your head on them. Either gives your face somewhere to be and your arms something to do.
- Arrange the sheet before you settle: drawn smoothly across the small of your back, gathered at the waist, or pulled up as far as you like. Smoothing a drape once you are lying on it is close to impossible.
- Cross your ankles behind you and lift your lower legs into the air. It is the most playful thing in this family and it stops the bottom half of the frame from going flat.
- Lengthen your neck forward and out of your shoulders rather than tipping your head back. Pressing the head back closes the throat; reaching it forward opens the whole line.
- Let your hair fall loose to one side, or forward across your face if you would rather it were not recognisable. Face down is a covered, low-pressure family, and how much of your face is in it is entirely your choice.
- Turn your face towards the camera, or away towards the light, and hold whichever you chose for the run.
- Breathe out as the picture is taken and let the smile land on the exhale. This family suits a genuine, easy smile better than a composed one.
- Come down onto the bed and rest your arms between runs. Propping on the forearms tires faster than it feels like it will, and tired arms show in the shoulders.
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.
