A minute ago, you were walking, talking, drinking coffee, or doing whatever you were actually doing.
Then someone says, “Wait, let me get a picture,” and suddenly your entire body becomes your problem.
What are your hands doing? Are your shoulders weird? Should you smile? Should you look at the camera? Should you look away and pretend you didn't notice it?
And then comes the advice that somehow makes everything worse:
“Just act natural.”
Natural compared to what? You were being natural five seconds ago.
The camera gives you a new job
The strange thing about being photographed is that you usually weren't doing anything wrong before the camera appeared.
You were already moving normally. You had a reason to move your hands. You had something to look at. You were responding to another person or paying attention to whatever was happening around you.
Then the camera arrives, and the activity disappears.
Now your job is to look good.
That sounds like an easy job until you actually try to do it consciously.
You start monitoring everything at once. Your hands, your smile, your posture, your face, your clothes, the angle of your head.
The funny part is that trying to look natural requires you to think about being natural, which is a surprisingly good way to stop being natural.
Give yourself something to do
You don't necessarily need a better pose. You may just need a reason to move.
Walk a few steps. Hold your coffee. Look through a shop window. Fix your bag before you leave. Talk to the person taking the photo. Turn toward something that has actually caught your attention.
None of these things are magic photography tricks. They simply give your body something to respond to.
If your hands are empty and you are standing still, you have to invent something for them to do. If you're walking, your legs already have a job. If you're talking, your face has something to react to.
This is why an ordinary activity can produce a better photograph than a carefully planned pose. The activity removes some of the decisions.
You don't have to pretend the camera isn't there
There is another piece of advice that sounds good but isn't always useful: ignore the camera.
Sometimes that works. Sometimes it produces a photograph where you can practically see the person thinking, “I am pretending not to notice the camera right now.”
You don't need to become unaware of the camera.
You can know exactly where it is and still behave normally. You can look at it. You can look away. You can laugh because the person behind it said something funny. You can pause for a second and then keep moving.
The goal isn't to defeat the camera by pretending it doesn't exist.
The goal is to stop making it the most important thing happening.
Change the situation instead of fixing your pose
One of the easiest traps is taking a bad photo and trying to repair yourself for the next one.
Maybe you think your smile looked strange, so you smile differently. Then you notice your shoulders. Then your hands. Then you start wondering where you should look.
Suddenly the next photograph contains all the instructions from the previous one.
It can be much easier to change the situation instead.
Take a few steps. Turn around. Sit down. Pick something up. Look at the person next to you. Move toward the light. Then take another photo.
You're giving yourself something new to respond to instead of carrying a growing list of instructions around in your head.
Take several photos before deciding whether you look good
Another small change can make a surprisingly big difference: don't judge every photograph immediately.
If you take one photo, dislike it, and immediately change your face for the next one, you're no longer responding to the situation. You're responding to the last photograph.
That can turn into a strange little loop:
Take a photo. Decide something is wrong. Fix it. Take another photo. Find something else to fix.
After a while, you're not even taking pictures anymore. You're troubleshooting your face.
Instead, let the person take a small sequence. Move around. Talk. Look at different things. Give yourself a minute or two before deciding what worked.
When you look at the whole sequence, you may notice that the later photographs feel different. Not necessarily more beautiful. Just less controlled.
The first photo doesn't have to be the good one
This is especially useful if you hate being photographed.
The first few seconds are often the most awkward because you're still very aware of the camera.
You're thinking about where to stand, how you're looking, whether your smile is okay, and whether the person taking the photo is waiting for you to do something.
Give that feeling a little time to pass.
Think about walking into a room you've never been in before. At first, you notice everything. Where the chairs are. Who is standing where. What you're supposed to do.
Twenty minutes later, you're just in the room.
Being photographed can work the same way. The camera may still be there, but it doesn't have to remain the center of your attention.
What about dating profile photos?
This matters even more when you're choosing photographs for a dating profile.
The goal isn't to make every picture look like a perfectly controlled portrait. In fact, a profile made entirely of polished poses can sometimes tell someone less about you than a photograph where you're simply doing something.
One photo can show your face clearly. Another can show you walking somewhere, having coffee, laughing with friends, or doing something you actually enjoy.
You don't need every photograph to prove that you look good.
You want the collection to give someone a believable sense of what meeting you might actually feel like.
You don't need to become good at posing
This is probably the most useful thing to remember.
You don't have to become the person who always knows what to do when a camera appears.
You can still feel slightly awkward. You can still dislike having your picture taken. You can still prefer being behind the camera.
The goal is simply to make the situation easier for your normal behavior to come through.
So the next time someone points a camera at you, don't immediately start searching for the perfect pose.
Do something.
Walk. Talk. Look around. Hold your coffee. Laugh at something. Move past the first few seconds.
You might find that the photograph you like most isn't the one where you finally figured out what to do with your face.
It's the one where, for a moment, you forgot you were supposed to be figuring it out.