How can I look more natural in my photo?
Your questions answered
Hey, I’m Bonnie and welcome to my Friday newsletter. Each week I share insight into the art of being photogenic, including how to pose, what to wear—fashionable style, makeup—and a lot of whatnot that may benefit your photo. Why, because you can do all that with a phone camera.
I’ve always dealt with a lot of worry and frankly I’m good at it.
I deal with worried models in front of the camera. I deal with them worrying about how their eyes look beady; a forehead rearing up fivefold in a portrait. I worry myself sick about introducing people to photography and going silent when I get to TikTok; that one of my pop-up notifications will notice a government shutdown and leave me adrift in cyberspace. I worry about a snake coming up through my toilet bowl. I worry about what the cat thinks when he sees me coming out of the shower, salesladies following me into the fitting room, the cancel culture, and falling victim to a phishing scam. I worry about scientists discovering someday that celery has been fattening all along.
But mostly I worry about social media. Being relatable online when the times are a-changing daily. Knowing how to respond and why not. What DM to address and when to let well enough alone. Never in the history of social media have worries had such a presence as at present. Each day has produced a heap of worries larger than yesterday and tomorrow promises to be even more worrisome. The only ones having fun anymore are the Internet trolls. You cannot help but envy their decadence. Throughout the years, these supernatural haters have shown an unnatural obsession with the gruesome details of social media, consumed with the graphic, the gaffe, cynicisms, resting bitch faces, too much light exposure, fake news, faux pas, Grumpy Cat, homeopathy, family influence with its share of jaw-droppers and head-scratchers, and a steady diet of unnatural photography.
If social media users haven’t thought about these questions, they ought to start asking:
How come there are still more trolls than people?
How come you’ve never seen a photogenic troll feed on Instagram?
Did you ever see a troll with a camera in one hand and a ring light in the other talk about how it is only natural to make mistakes—it’s part of being human; yet have you ever seen a natural troll?
These unanswered questions have bothered me because every time I turn around social media is bandying about some unnatural photo that was taken quite naturally in the past but is bound to worry me in the future.
I recently read a DM from a subscriber, and it made me pause and reflect. That subscriber is named Ariela. She was a camera fiend. She had tried everything from taking a photograph of her smile to sedate to suave and posted them all to social media. A troll figured she was an immortal mean girl. A consummate politician who could flash an unnatural smile for the camera just before the candidates debate. She got herself into a sweat about her unnatural looking self-picture, forcing her to stutter-step a few times. Within the span-length of three go-rounds in front of the camera, this shutterbug was petrified. That’s was this newsletter is about. Surviving.
Psst! If you want to submit your photos for future publications, please do so here.
DM @bonnierzm: How can I look more natural in a photo? I always end up with the same picture. I look frozen. Either I smile and look unnatural or else I just have no expression at all and seem unnatural. Sometimes I even look like a statue. Or I feel that way. I only got a natural pic of myself when my friends told a joke and the camera caught me afterwards smiling. I want to capture my natural smile without spontaneous lol, for example: in family portraits, and look seriously approachable in the urban setting I use for self-portraits without an amused smile on my face: that is, not to look unnaturally pleased with myself.
Ariela
When you really stop to think about it, photography is nonnatural. All artwork is man-made. A non-naturalistic work of art or design is not reducible to natural observable characteristics but existing objectively as a metaphysical reality apprehended by a priori intuition. Nevertheless, it is possible to learn how these objective judgments are made. A lot of it has to do with the business of visual language. The objective criteria by which we can determine whether a work is successful, or good (in our case, made to look natural) is dependent on or explainable in terms of form and function. If the purpose of designing a recliner is to function as a chair, but the seat functions as a slide, we can objectively judge that design as a failure. And where the chairback reclines with a perpendicular seat, form follows function and meets with the purpose, which is objectively good design. I completely understand our natural instinct to worry about nonnatural looking stuff. It is all very meta.
Next to thirst traps, photobombs, and cheese, a natural expression is one of the most unnatural events caught on camera. It’s one of those awkward times when you know everybody else had to put on a face but nobody will admit it.
Almost all “natural” photographs of humans, as distinguishable from photographs of animals in their natural habitat, are the object and candid camerawork of paparazzi who snapshoot unsuspecting celebs at the most inopportune moments, naturally. If it’s any consolation, the production or making of photographic imagery especially with artistic skill or style was once considered artifice. The result of “all this artifice, melodrama, and incredible behavior is a warm, witty, profoundly tragic portrait,” reported Time magazine. Even still, we have objective criteria for determining whether design elements meet with our purpose. We will be looking at those criteria later in this newsletter. For now, here are some actionable steps you can take to ensure a more natural form in your next photo op.
Do the opposite of what seems natural.
Smile like a grinch.
Stand like a statue.
Look at it another way.
1. Do the opposite of what seems natural.
If constraint to the sustained movement of photographic subjects made to say “cheese” in an exaggerated way had become almost your second nature, after a while, doing that to prepare for a photograph by subjecting to some process, you may want to stop, reverse course, and head in the opposite direction.
1): the usual picture in a photo album; side by side (2): portrait of a woman at ease with friends, smiling, always spontaneous and natural. The unnatural smile and posture in the family portrait resolved itself by the outcome of the self-portrait. Let me break that down. There is no warrant to claim unnatural goings-on reared in a fine family image. A carefully diagrammed heartwarmer about babies and parents and the support of sisterhood, which BTW is a nice touch, literally. The crux of the problem here arose from the stolid stance rearing up on the face. In contrast with the self-portrait’s actual show of happiness, the spot on the family is not looking so hot. Not every photo op is a riot or stand-up comedy appearance. To put a smile on your face and not be made a laughingstock, think like a method actor. If a miserable SOB acting a part in a motion picture can emote joy by guess and by golly, then so can we.