Recreate this look

Stand Tall

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.

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

Stand about an arm's length in front of the wall 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 wall. 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 wall. 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.