Here are some practical tips that will help you look better in photographs. It takes a little planning but the results are worth the effort. In fact, even if you get caught off guard this video offers some great posing suggestions that will definitely make you look better.

Digital Cameras: User’s Guide: How To Look Good In A Photograph

Most of the time when we’re taking pictures of people we lift the camera up and fire away. With just a little thought and planning it’s possible to take portraits that are WAY better. Here are 10 simple guidelines that will help you take your people portraits from mundane to pro.

A photograph is worth a thousand words and no where is that more true than in online dating photos.

Photography pro Erin Manning takes us step-by-step on how to produce and much better photo for your online dating profile. By following a few basic guidelines you can create a photo that has a far greater potential to attract matches.

All too often, flash pictures come out looking unnatural, flat, or a little bit dark. Several simple techniques can be used to avoid this effect and make your flash pictures look more natural.

Raise the Level of Existing Light

If you turn on all the lights in a room or open curtains or blinds during the daytime, this will raise the level of ambient light and create more natural flash pictures. This technique will work with all cameras in all modes. In the pictures below, look at the difference made by raising the level of existing light. The picture on the left was taken in the dark with flash only. The picture on the right was taken with flash but all the lights in the room were turned on. Both pictures were taken with a fully automatic point-and-shoot camera with no changes made to the settings.

Of course, the flash is doing almost all of the work illuminating the subject. Adding room light has the effect of a “fill light” to soften shadows created by the flash, as well as providing illumination over the entire picture area.

Bottom Line:

If you are taking pictures with flash, it can help to bring up the light in the room as much as you can by turning on any lamps and overhead lights.

Raising Sensitivity

You can capture more available light when you raise the camera’s ISO setting. This is because at ISO 400 and 5.6, the camera’s sensor will pick up more existing light than at ISO 100 and 5.6 (assuming shutter speed is kept the same).

This affect is easily controlled with SLR cameras, which allow you to change the ISO without changing the aperture used with flash. Other cameras may change the aperture when the sensitivity is changed. Make a few test exposures to see how your results change as you raise ISO.

Do not raise the ISO so high that your picture quality goes down because of the noisy-grainy effect that comes with raising ISO. Experiment with your camera to find the “sweet spot” between sensitivity and noise.

Flash Modes

Many digital cameras have several flash modes to choose from giving you more control over the light in your picture situation. Here are the most common:

Automatic mode – flash triggers automatically. Turn this mode off when in places that forbid inside flash photography, such as museums and theaters.

Red-eye reduction – fires the flash several times just just prior to exposing a photo. Reduces the reflection in a subject’s eyes which produces red eyes. The rapid flashes cause a subject’s pupils to contract and helps minimize the red-eye effect.

Forced (fill-in) flash – keeps the flash on in situations where automatic mode would keep it off. Used when additional illumination is needed such as when the main source of light is in the back of a subject or shadows prevent details from showing.

Suppressed flash – turns the flash off

Slow sync (also called Night Scene)* – use to capture a dimly lit background at night. The flash fires briefly to light the foreground subject.

Flash exposure compensation – used to increase or decrease the output of the flash.

Portraits can be really challenging but if you wade through all the technical jargon and the various tips and hints there are two tips that stand head and shoulders (Get it?) above all the others. I’ve toted a camera around for years and taken literally thousands of images and when I think about the pictures people like the most, again, I have used these two SIMPLE tips to capture them.

Tip #1 – Look Confident Even if you’re not!

Have you ever had your picture taken by someone who took a really long time to take the picture or looked like they had no clue how the camera worked?

It’s agonizing!

As they say, don’t let them see you sweat, could be truer in the case of taking portraits. If people see you fiddling a lot and looking puzzled they lose confidence and it shows in their expressions. I assume that most reading this are not professional photographers so this first tip is doubly important for you. If you’re using a point-and-shoot digital camera most of the hard work will be done by the camera so you can focus on checking out the background to see if it works and it the lighting is OK.

Actually, looking confident is the first tip because it gives you an opportunity to make your subject trust you from the get go. It feels good when someone says, “you know, this is not the most flattening background, lighting or whatever, let’s move over here.”

People like to be directed, because they want to look good.

Tip #2 – Take LOTS of pictures & I mean lots!

If you want a great looking portrait shoot, shoot, and shoot some more. Most people make the mistake of trying to capture the perfect picture in one or two pictures, bad mistake. Most people fire off a couple of shots and hope for the best. We all know how that generally ends up.

When I take portraits I take a lot of pictures, in fact I take so many that my subject finally gets bored and practically ignores me. And it is at that moment when some of the best expressions happen. They drop their defenses, stop worrying about how they look and tend to act more natural.

It never fails that when I take lots of pictures of someone the VERY best ones are near the end!

We are all creatures of habit. When we get in front of a camera our “camera behavior habit” takes over resulting in photographs that don’t really show us at our best.

So the strategy behind tip #2 is to literally wear them out and move them beyond their “camera behavior habit.” How this generally plays out is I’ll let them know I’m going to take a lot of pictures. And I tell them right up front!

Then I snap, snap, and snap some more knowing very well that I will be throwing away 95 -98 percent of the photos, but nobody cares because it’s digital.

Your subject will get bored… but when you hand them a couple of really nice looking pictures of themselves the boredom will be a distant memory and they will think you’re a great photographer.

By the way, these don’t have to be full blown photographic shoots. These two tips work for family, friends, coworkers, birthday parties and etc.

Force yourself to try them! Your photo quality will increase substantially!

Flipping your digital camera over for better portraits is a technique you won’t find in your digital camera owners manual.

Note: The differences are subtle and do not work in every situation, yet it’s fun to experiment with!

If you are using your compact digital camera and flash for shooting a portrait here’s a suggestion that you might never consider, turn your camera upside down.

Believe it or not by turning your camera upside down impacts how the light from the flash illuminates your subject. Most people have circles under their eyes and when you turn your camera upside down the flash hits the skin at a different angle and helps diminish the circles and makes them look younger.

The first photo was taken in the normal position with the flash on top.

In this second photo I flipped the camera upside down.

Notice in the second photo because the angle of the light from the flash is now hitting her skin at a different angle it helps reduce lines and is a more flattering light.

True, the effect is subtle. However, if you show someone a photo of themselves using this technique they will like the upside down flash version better, guaranteed.

Also, these photos are REALLY closeup! In a normal proportioned photo the effect is even more flattering.

Give it a try!

Not everyone feels comfortable having their picture taken. Unless you attended modeling school or took a how to be more photogenic class in junior high, high school, or college chances are when find yourself in front of a camera you end up, ‘winging it,’ which doesn’t always work out in your favor.

So the question is, why do some people always seem to look good in pictures?

Truth is, some people have a triggered response when they are in front of a camera. They do certain things that make them look better. You can also develop a triggered response that makes YOU look better.

These photogenic steps are based on over 10 years of professional photography.

Put more bluntly, when you photograph people for a living…

- If they don’t like how they look in the pictures
- They do not buy any pictures
- You do not make any money!

So… you learn how to coach people into doing things that make them look good.

Use these 5 steps and you too will develop a triggered response that will insure you look your best.

Step 1

If you observe men and women standing naturally without ANY coaching, you’ll notice there is a BIG difference between how they stand. Women naturally shift weight to one foot. Doing so angles the body slightly, tips the shoulders a little, and angles the head just a bit. This stance immediately adds dimension to any photo, it looks more interesting and natural.

Men on the other hand, we tend to face squarely into the camera with weight evenly distributed on both feet. We have all seen the results, pictures that look stiff, unnatural, and very plain looking.

Here’s the solution.

If you are standing – turn slightly and rest your weight on one foot. It may FEEL goofy, but you WILL look better.

If you are sitting – angle to one side or the other.

Step 2

Lean slightly toward the camera. Leaning slightly toward the camera adds interest, dimension, and a natural look to a photo. Think of having a long neck like a gazelle, and tilt your chin down just a bit to avoid the appearance of a double chin and also to prevent the camera from getting a view right up your nostrils.

Step 3

Learn how to change your state No, I don’t mean if you live in Idaho you need to move to Oregon. Changing state means going from level 1 to level 5, or in other words, instead of looking like you were caught off guard, you look natural and like you are enjoying yourself.

Models are taught to change state by developing a “trigger.” So when they are about to have their picture taken, even if they are in a crummy mood, they can go from level 1 to level 5 in a heart beat. Firing a trigger is a reminder to do the things that make you look good. Believe it or not, THE most successful trigger we found over the years was called the “rear cheek squeeze.” It’s really cool because it’s inconspicuous. Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like; you squeeze the cheeks of your rear end together. Don’t make fun of it until you try it. To see it’s effectiveness try this experiment. Ask someone to sit on a chair and then ask them to squeeze their cheeks together. I have not met ONE person who doesn’t immediately smile and say something like, okay, now what?

Step 4

Learn to “¾ smile” People don’t like pictures of themselves with huge smiles. Smiling too big exposes gums and causes your eyes to turn into slits.

Step 5

Never look directly at the lens – ALWAYS, look slightly ABOVE the lens.

Here are some additional tips if you know you are going to have your photo taken and you have a little time to prepare.

1. If needed, use ‘teeth whitener’ to have pearly white teeth – it does make a difference. Plan ahead and give yourself enough time to brighten your smile. Get a teeth whitening kits at your local pharmacy.

2. Dress for timelessness – Stay away from patterns, go more for solids. Example: horizontal stripes will make you look heavy. Don’t wear red, black or white. Digital cameras sometimes have problems with red. Black and white offer too much contrast.

Red-eye happens when the light from the built in flash of your digital camera reflects off your subjects retina. Because your digital cameras flash is so close to the lens the line the light takes to and from the eye is almost a straight line. Because of this direct path and the reflectivity of the retina the light inherits the red color of the blood vessels in your subjects eyes. The results are the distinctive red glow we see in so my of our compact digital camera photos.

Because the flash is so close to the lens that when someone is looking into the flash they are also looking directly into the flash. In essence their eyes are picking up and reflecting all the flash from the camera. It’s for this reason that many people purchase external flash units so they can position the light further off center and all but eliminate any red-eye. Well that may be fine IF you want to go through all the trouble but what about the rest of us who are basically shooting from the hip and don’t want to bother with auxiliary flash units?

Here are several strategies that will reduce red-eye

Position people so they are not looking directly into the camera.

Why not shoot a profile? I know, it’s not always appropriate but profile can be really nice looking, even flattering. another trick is just before you take your photo extend one of your arms to the right or left and have let everyone know to look and smile are your hand. If people look too far off camera it can look odd, so an arms length seems to work great. Doing this means the light from the flash will not be moving in the straight line that it would if they were looking directly at the camera.

Set Your Camera to Red-Eye Reduction Mode

One of the problems we see with the red-eye reduction mode is that it tends to take people off guard resulting in some interesting photos. If you change your into this mode do your subjects a favor and warn them there will be TWO flashes and that the second flash is when the photo is taken.

Firing two flashes works because the first acts as “signal” to cause the eyes to slightly constrict. When the eyes contrict less light moves along the stright line path and reflected back at the cmara resulting in diminshed red-eye.

The Darker the Setting the Worse the Red-Eye

You can’t always move your subject to a better lighting situation. However, if you indoors and you can turn on more lights, do it. You’ll notice that when you take flash pictures outdoors there is seldom red-eye. This is because the eye has constricted and less light enters and is reflected by the retina. Just keep in mind if you can rasie the overall level of light in any situation you will reduce the probability of red-eye. One other benifit for raising the light level is that your camera will sense the increased light and will lower the amount of flash it uses to illuminate the scene.