Tips for Posing Better in Your Photos

I want to preface this post by stating the obvious – I’m not a model. I’ve never received any formal training, and I never model for anyone except for myself. I wouldn’t even consider what I do to be modeling because I have attached a personality behind my clothes, and not act simply as a clothes-hanger. So now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to the main point of this post – how to pose better in your photos!

Anytime I’m with a friend who doesn’t blog or Instagram and we’re taking photos, I always get asked how to pose to look better in the photo. The nature of my job requires me to pose quite often, and after reviewing thousands upon thousands of photos of myself, and comparing them against photos of others, I’ve come to the conclusion (or at least ones that work for me) that there definitely are a couple of tips that you can incorporate into your photo-taking routine to improve the quality of your posing.

I do have to say that I have been blessed with quite long legs, so I don’t always employ all of these tactics, but they basically are ones that I most often use when I want to enhance the length of my legs or my overall height.

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Shoot From Below 

The number one tip that I can give is to direct your photographer to get down low and shoot. Don’t be afraid to ask your friend to crouch. The results will be worth it. The perspective change will put more emphasis on your legs, and result in them looking longer. If you shoot from straight on, or from a downward angle, you will only end up stunting your legs, causing you to actually look shorter than you really are. This is all about creating the illusion that you have nice and long legs.

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Elevate Your Heels

You can also create the illusion of longer legs by throwing on a pair of shoes with a raised heel. Even better is if your shoe has a pointed toe. By raising your heel, you end up adding about 3-4 inches of leg visually. It’s as if your legs go on forever! The pointed toe also adds a nice touch as your leg tapers out towards the end, making everything super long looking.

Another thing to keep in mind when it comes to your shoes is to keep them simple. The crazier and chunkier looking your shoes are, the more stunted your legs will look. You really want your legs to do the talking, so keep the embellishments on your shoes to a minimum.

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The Leading Leg

You know how we’ve always been told to avoid horizontal stripes because it makes our vision see the person as wider? The same can be applied to the vertical axis. If you create the illusion of a line going up and down on your body, the vision of the person looking at you will be skewed to see you as taller. How do you do that exactly? By creating leading lines with your body.

A tip that I always share with others is to make sure that the leg closest to the camera is the straight one. This causes the eye to stretch out the image, and thus elongating your legs. Your back leg can do whatever it wants, the eyes don’t care. So poses such as walking and/or sitting are great because they allow you to easily create the leading leg illusion without looking awkward.

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And there you go! Easy as pie. It doesn’t take a lot to create the illusion of longer legs. Go on out and try these tips to get better pictures the next time you’re shooting! If you also have any tips and tricks of your own, I’d love to learn them as well!