Recreate this look

Sill Sit

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.

Camera

Book about an hour of the room to yourself — twenty minutes to set up and get one test frame right, the rest to shoot. The light decides which hour of the day; knowing nobody is due back is what lets the rest of it be enjoyable. Stopping early is a finished session too.
The photographs stay on your phone. Nothing here uploads anything and nothing is sent anywhere; nobody sees a frame unless you show it, and you can delete any or all of them at any point. That is what makes it safe to take far more than you need, which is what the rest of these steps ask you to do.
What to wear is named by the look itself — a robe, a slip, a shirt, a set. Read it as a shape and a mood rather than a shopping list: your own version, something you already own and like the feel of, photographs better than anything bought new for the occasion. Soft, worn-in fabric drapes and moves when you move; stiff new fabric holds its creases and reads as a costume.
What goes underneath, or does not, is yours to decide and nothing here needs to know it. If you are unsure, start more covered than you think you want — the robe closed, a shirt over the top — and open it up later, once you have seen a few frames you like. Taking a layer off part way through is easy; talking yourself back into one is not.
Expect the first few minutes to feel ridiculous. They do for everybody, and the feeling lifts at about the point you stop watching yourself and start adjusting the frame. Shoot a run you fully intend to delete, delete it, and carry on — that run is the warm-up, not a waste of one.
Put the phone on a tripod. A cheap phone tripod, a stack of books, or anything that holds it still will do — everything in these instructions assumes the phone is not in your hand.
Set the self-timer to ten seconds — the setting that counts down after you press the button and then takes the picture on its own, so nothing is touched while you are in position. Look for a clock or a stopwatch symbol among the camera's options, and choose ten rather than three: ten is enough to get back, settle and take a breath, and three is not. A small remote does the same job with no countdown.
Wipe the lens with a soft cloth before you start. It is the single commonest reason a whole run comes out hazy.
Set the height to the middle of your body as you will be positioned in the frame — chest height if you are standing, and level with the middle of you if you are sitting or lying down. Keep the phone level rather than tilted down at you.
Stand back two to three metres for a whole-body frame and closer for anything tighter. Backing off and letting the frame be wide is more flattering than getting close, on every phone.
Before you look at yourself, look at what is behind you. Take one frame and read the back of it rather than the front — a laundry basket, a full clothes rail, a bright towel, a cable trailing across a corner. You will shoot ten frames you love and notice all of it afterwards, so two minutes of clearing is the cheapest improvement on this list.
Your phone focuses on whatever you tap, and you cannot tap yourself from behind it: tap while standing at the phone and the focus lands on the far side of the room rather than on you. So give it a stand-in — a cushion, a folded coat or a pillow stood on end, exactly where you will be and at roughly the height of your face. The one you used to set the exposure will do.
Tap the screen on the stand-in and hold your finger there until the camera says the focus is locked; most show a small badge or a padlock when it is, and locking is what stops the phone going hunting the moment you move. Then take the stand-in away, start the timer and get into position.
Take one test frame, look at it properly, and fix the height, the framing and the focus before you shoot anything else. It wants to be sharp on you rather than on what is behind you. Two minutes here saves a whole run.
Then shoot a run rather than a single frame, either way round: burst mode, where holding the picture button down gives you a stream of frames in a couple of seconds, or a repeating timer, where one countdown fires three or ten shots a few seconds apart. Find out which your camera offers while you are still setting up. Ten frames and a choice beats one frame and a hope.
Hold the phone upright, in portrait orientation.
Set the camera app's aspect ratio to 4:5 if it offers one — the aspect ratio is just the shape of the frame, how tall it is against how wide, and most apps list two or three shapes to choose between near the button you take pictures with. If yours does not offer 4:5, shoot the standard upright frame and crop to 4:5 afterwards — leave a little room above your head and below you so the crop has somewhere to go.
Your face is in this frame, so leave a little space above your head rather than cutting it tight, and make sure the focus lands on your face in the test frame.

Posing

Sit on the front edge of the windowsill rather than back in it. Perching keeps your back long; sinking in rounds it, and a rounded back is the thing that makes a seated frame look slumped.
Let your weight settle onto one hip instead of sitting evenly on both. It is the seated version of standing on one leg, and it does the same work.
Angle your knees across the frame and away from the lens — never point them straight at it. Knees aimed at the camera foreshorten the legs; knees turned a quarter away lengthen them.
Lengthen your spine as though someone were pulling gently upwards on the crown of your head, then let your shoulders roll back and drop. Do the lengthening first and the dropping second; the other order just lifts the shoulders.
Lean forward a little from the hips. That forward lean is most of the trick: it opens the collarbones, lengthens the neck and reads as ease rather than as effort.
Keep your elbows and upper arms an inch clear of your ribs — elbows on your knees, a hand resting on the windowsill beside you, a forearm draped along the back of the seat if it has one. An arm laid flat against your side and the line of your body read as one shape in the frame; the inch of daylight is what keeps them as two.
Give your hands a real task rather than a position: cradle a mug in both hands, clasp them loosely between your knees, gather a hem, rest them in your lap, reach one toward your hair. A task looks like a moment; a placement looks like a pose.
Bring your chin forward and slightly down toward whatever you are looking at, rather than lifting it straight up. Forward-and-down keeps the jawline clean and stops the neck from disappearing.
If the seat has a back, use it: turn side-on to it, or sit facing it and fold your forearms along the top. Having something to lean into removes the balancing and makes a long run of frames far easier.
Choose one place to look before the timer starts — down the lens, off toward the light, into your own lap — and stay there for the whole run.
Breathe out as the picture is taken. Seated frames stiffen faster than any other kind, and the exhale is what unlocks the shoulders.
Between frames, change one thing: uncross and recross the legs the other way, swap which hip carries the weight, move a hand. Small changes across a run give you a set to choose from rather than one repeated frame.

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.