Recreate this look
In the Mirror, Robe Slipping
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.
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.
