Recreate this look

Valentine Red

Lighting

Any time after dark, which makes this the easiest look in the library to plan: no weather to wait for and no hour to catch. Pick an evening when the room will be yours.
Use one lamp and nothing else. A bedside lamp with a warm bulb and its shade on is exactly right; the overheads go off, and so does everything else in the room.
Put the lamp low and to one side of you, fairly close, so the light rakes sideways across you rather than falling down onto you. That shallow, sideways angle is what shows texture — lace, skin, the line of a shoulder — and overhead light flattens all of it.
If the bulb is bare or harsh, clip a white pillowcase or a thin sheet over the shade to soften it, but keep the fabric well clear of a hot bulb.
Let the far side of you fall into deep shadow and leave it there. A single lamp is meant to light part of you, and trying to fill the other side with a second lamp is what turns this look ordinary.
Set the exposure — how bright or dark the picture comes out — off a stand-in, not off yourself: you cannot tap your own skin from behind the phone. Stand a cushion or a folded coat where you will be, tap the screen on its lamp-lit part, then ease the slider down a little so the lit skin glows rather than burns out.
Lamplight is dimmer than it feels, so the phone will capture more slowly than usual. Hold still through the frame and take plenty — some will be sharper than others, and that is normal rather than a fault.

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.
Turn the phone on its side, in landscape orientation. If the app offers a choice of aspect ratio — the shape of the frame, how tall it is against how wide — 4:3 is the wider, squarer one of the everyday options.
Frame along the length of your body rather than across it. A landscape frame wants the long line of you running across it, and it is worth moving the tripod to get that line straight.
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

Lie on your side rather than flat on your back, and prop yourself up on the lower forearm so your upper body lifts clear of the surface. Propped rather than flat is the single most important choice in this family — a flat body makes a flat frame, and the forearm is what lifts the ribs clear so the line from shoulder to hip has a curve in it again.
Stack your hips one above the other and square them up, then draw the top knee forward over the lower leg. Stretch the lower leg long. That combination is what draws the long line from ribs to hip across the frame.
Keep the ribs doing the lifting. With the forearm holding them clear and the hip settled, a natural hollow opens between the two, and that hollow is what a reclining frame is built on — let the weight sink back down and the frame loses it.
Keep one knee raised. A reclining frame with both legs lying flat and parallel goes lifeless, and a single lifted knee is what keeps it alive.
Take the weight on the forearm and not on the wrist or the elbow point. If it starts to ache, slide a folded towel or a pillow underneath — it will be out of frame and you will hold the pose far longer.
Give the free hand somewhere to go: resting on your stomach, tracing the line from waist to hip, reaching up into your hair, trailing over the edge of the bed. Never leave it lying loose in the middle of the frame.
Lengthen your neck away from the shoulder and lift your chin a little off your chest. Lying down shortens the neck by default, so this one has to be deliberate.
Spread your hair deliberately — fanned out behind you, swept over one shoulder, or falling forward across your face if you would rather not be recognisable. Hair trapped underneath you flattens the whole frame.
Arrange the sheet, throw or robe before you settle, not after. Tuck it where you want it, check the edge falls in a line you like, and then get comfortable; adjusting a drape while lying down always pulls the rest of the pose apart.
If you are lying back rather than on your side, tip your head back over the edge of the bed to open the throat, and keep one knee raised. Only try this once you are warmed up — it takes a little trust to let your head go.
Breathe out as the picture is taken, and let the smile or the softening arrive on the exhale rather than being held from the start.
Shoot a run, then change one thing — roll a shoulder forward, swap which knee is raised, move the free hand. Reclining frames all look alike on the screen and quite different on the day, so give yourself several.

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.