Recreate this look

Mirror, Bare-Back Reflection

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

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.