Recreate this look
Robe Off the Shoulders
Lighting
- Shoot in the hour after sunrise or the hour before sunset, when the sun is low and the light through the window has gone warm and honeyed. The time of day is the whole equipment list for this one, so look up when the sun sets where you are and start setting up half an hour before that.
- Position yourself so the low sun comes across you from the side, or from behind and a little to one side so it rims your edges. Facing straight into it flattens the warmth away.
- Turn the room lights off. Household bulbs and golden sunlight are different colours, and mixing them makes the skin go strange.
- On a grey day, a single warm lamp placed low and to one side stands in for this beautifully. It is not the same light, but it is the same shape of light, and it is the difference between shooting today and waiting for weather.
- 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 sunlit side, then ease the slider down a touch — golden light is brighter than it looks and the highlights get hot quickly.
- Work fast. This light changes noticeably every ten minutes and it is gone in under an hour, so set everything up before it arrives rather than during it.
Posing
- Turn your back to the lens first and get the body settled before you think about the look back. The body faces away, the face comes back — in that order, and never both at once.
- Settle your weight into one hip and push it out to the side. Facing away, that push is the whole shape of the frame: it is what draws the long S from shoulder to hip.
- Let a gentle arch come into your lower back. Gentle is the word — a small curve reads as a line, and a big one reads as strain.
- Standing still, sweep your hair over to the far shoulder, away from the camera, and pin it there if it will not stay — clearing the nape and the shoulder blade is what makes the back of the frame worth looking at. Walking away, do the opposite and leave it loose: hair that swings a beat behind the turn is the thing that tells the eye you were moving, and a sweep you have to hold in place cannot swing.
- Roll both shoulders back and down. From behind, the shoulders are the widest thing in the frame, and dropping them is what turns a hunched line into a long one.
- Now turn back over the near shoulder — the one closest to the camera. Standing still, turn the head and not the torso: if the shoulders come round with it, the shape you just built disappears. Walking away, turn from the waist instead and let the shoulders come — there is no still shape to protect, and a head swivelling on a squared-up back reads as a woman looking for something rather than a woman glancing back.
- Bring your chin toward that shoulder rather than away from it, and lift it slightly. Chin toward the shoulder is what makes a look-back read as inviting rather than startled.
- Give the arms a job on the way round: a hand resting on the hip, one lifted to hold the hair, one reaching across to the far shoulder. Keep the near arm an inch clear of your ribs.
- Decide how far round to turn, and know that you decide it. A quarter turn shows a cheekbone and nothing more; a full turn meets the lens. Both are finished frames, so choose the one you actually want.
- Standing still, keep the turn where you put it and do not drift back to the front while the timer runs — the neck wants to unwind, and the frames where it does are the ones that look uncertain. Mid-step there is nothing to keep: walk the line again instead, and again, because the frame you want is one stride in four and you cannot feel which one it was.
- Breathe out as the picture is taken and let your expression soften on the exhale.
- Shoot a run and vary how far the face comes round between frames, from barely at all to fully. You will almost always prefer a different amount than you expected before you looked.
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.
