Recreate this look
Backlit Sheers
Lighting
- Pick a bright but overcast day and shoot in the middle of it. Grey is the friend here rather than the compromise: direct sun through the glass is hard to control and leaves hard beams across the room.
- Put the window directly behind you and stand between it and the camera. The light comes from behind, so what the frame keeps is your shape and your lit edges.
- Close a sheer curtain across the glass if you have one — a white bedsheet or a gauzy scarf pinned up works just as well. It turns a bright rectangle into a soft glow and keeps the window from burning out.
- Turn the room lights off, so the only light in the frame is the one behind you.
- This is the one setup where what you tap decides the frame, because it sets the exposure — how bright or dark the picture comes out. Put a cushion or a folded coat where you will be to tap against, since you cannot tap your own body from behind the phone. Tapping the bright window drops you to a dark, clean outline; tapping the stand-in keeps your face and your skin visible with the window glowing behind. Decide which you want before the timer starts — they are two different frames.
- Whichever you chose, nudge the slider a little the other way to stop the window going to a flat white void. A window that still shows a hint of what is behind it is what makes this look expensive.
Posing
- Stand about an arm's length in front of the window 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 window. 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 window. 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.
