You put your phone somewhere. Set the timer. Walk into place.
Then you wait.
And suddenly you are very aware that you are standing in front of a phone that is about to take your picture.
You start thinking about your face. Your hands. Whether you are standing normally. Whether you should smile.
The timer counts down.
You take the photo.
And somehow you look like someone who knew a photo was being taken.
Which, of course, you did.
That is the slightly annoying part of taking your own photos. You are not only the person being photographed. You are also the person controlling the camera.
There is no one else to create a little distance between you and the photograph.
The problem isn’t necessarily the timer
A timer can be useful. So can a remote shutter.
But neither one solves the whole problem.
The real difficulty is that you know exactly when the photograph is happening.
If you press the button and then stand still waiting for the picture, your attention naturally turns toward the camera.
Now the camera is the activity.
And that makes it surprisingly difficult to look like you were doing something else.
This is why simply being told to “act natural” usually doesn’t help much.
You cannot really relax while checking whether you look relaxed.
Give the camera less of your attention
One way to make taking photos alone easier is to stop treating the photograph as the main event.
Instead of walking into position and waiting for the camera, give yourself something to do.
Make coffee.
Walk across the room.
Look through a bookshelf.
Water a plant.
Pick something up.
Adjust your bag before leaving the house.
The activity doesn’t need to be interesting enough for a movie.
It just needs to give your attention somewhere to go.
This changes something small but important.
You are no longer trying to create a natural expression.
You are doing something that naturally creates an expression.
Your hands have a reason to move. Your body has somewhere to go. Your face has something to react to.
The photograph becomes a record of the activity instead of the activity itself.
This is where video can help
Sometimes even a timer leaves too much pressure on a single moment.
You have ten seconds to get into position, and then you have one frame.
If you don’t like it, you do it again.
And again.
Eventually, you are not doing the activity anymore. You are doing repeated versions of the activity for the camera.
Video can change that.
Instead of asking yourself to find one perfect moment, you can let several moments happen and choose a frame afterward.
You might walk toward the camera, turn around, pick up your coffee, sit down, or simply move through an ordinary part of your day.
The camera records the whole thing.
You don’t have to know which second will become the photograph.
That small difference can make the experience feel much less like posing.
You can also ask someone else
If another person is available, you don’t necessarily need to turn them into a photographer.
In fact, that can make things worse.
“Stand there.”
“Look at me.”
“Smile.”
“Do it again.”
Now both people are thinking about the photograph.
Instead, the other person can simply hold the camera while you continue doing something.
Walk somewhere.
Talk to them.
Look at something nearby.
Carry your coffee.
Get into the car.
The goal isn’t to make the other person direct you into a natural pose.
It is to let them remove one job from your hands.
You are still living the moment.
They are just the one pressing the button.
The best method depends on the moment
There isn’t one correct way to take a natural photo of yourself.
A timer can work well when you are already doing something that doesn’t require much movement.
Video can be useful when the moment involves more movement or when you don’t want to think about the exact second the photograph will happen.
A remote shutter can give you more control without making you run back and forth to the phone.
Another person can make things easier when the scene naturally involves conversation or movement.
The important part is not the equipment.
It is the relationship between the activity and the camera.
If the camera controls the activity, the photograph will often feel like a photograph being made.
If the activity continues and the camera simply records part of it, the result has a better chance of feeling like life.
You don’t need to look unaware
There is another small trap here.
When people try to make a self-taken photo look candid, they sometimes try very hard to look as though they don’t know the camera is there.
That can create another kind of performance.
You don’t need to pretend the camera doesn’t exist.
You can know it is there.
You just don’t want it to be the most important thing happening.
That is a much easier goal.
The difference is subtle, but you can usually feel it when you see the finished photograph.
One photo says:
I was trying to take a good picture.
Another says:
I happened to be doing something when this picture was taken.
Neither one is necessarily technically better.
But the second one often gives you more to look at.
And more importantly, it gives you something to remember.
Natural photos are easier when you stop asking the camera to create the moment
Taking your own photo will always involve some awareness of the camera.
That’s not a failure.
You don’t need to trick yourself into forgetting that you are being photographed.
You just need to give yourself something more interesting to pay attention to.
The camera can be there.
You can know it’s there.
You can even press the button yourself.
The important thing is that the photograph doesn’t become the whole moment.
Because when there is something happening before the camera takes the picture, you have much less to perform.
You simply have something to do.