{"id":205,"date":"2012-05-17T01:13:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-17T01:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/debralwallace.com\/how-to-look-great-in-any-photo-pointer-1-happy-thoughts\/"},"modified":"2012-05-17T01:13:00","modified_gmt":"2012-05-17T01:13:00","slug":"how-to-look-great-in-any-photo-pointer-1-happy-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/debralwallace.com\/how-to-look-great-in-any-photo-pointer-1-happy-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Look Great in Any Photo: Pointer #1 Happy Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"
So maybe you’ll never really think you look 100% awesome in a photo because you’re an adult and a woman (thank you media) but it is possible to have a photo you’re proud to share. This is the first article in a series called “How to Look Great in Any Photo: Pointer #1 Happy Thoughts.”  I learned this lesson recently while taking a self portrait.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Self portraits are hard. And not just because you have to run back and forth to the camera a million times.  They’re hard because photography is intended to capture what’s there and unless you’re an actor you feel ridiculous smiling at the wall.  Ergo, you generally also look ridiculous.<\/span><\/div>\n
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The image below was taken a few months ago when I attempted a self portrait while my baby was trying to knock over the tripod.  I was stressed out, but I needed an image for my website and could not get a genuine smile out of myself.  There were much worse examples but apparently I didn’t upload them.  Go figure.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Wow, what a terrible picture.  Do I get props for posting this atrocity for the world to see??? <\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


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Then I picked up the baby (which always makes me smile).  The result was a happy but somewhat unprofessional looking picture, whereas what I was going for was happy and professional.  <\/span>We have plenty of snapshots of me holding babies on my hard drive, but we didn’t have any quality portraits of me. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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Better expression… still not a great photo.  The baby makes up for it a little though…<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n
So I had this photo on my website for a while but one day one of my awesome clients came by for a headshot.  I had my studio all set up, miraculously my clothes were clean, my kids were all sleeping at the same time (even more miraculous) and I thought it was the perfect time to give it another shot and then it came to me – what makes me smile?  <\/span><\/p>\n

There I am in a room by myself and I need to get a genuine smile before my kids wake up from their naps, discover the backdrop set up and take over the camera remote.  So I literally started pretending that I was talking to my baby – down to the mommy voice and everything.  Then the thought of what I must look like was so amusing to me that I had no problem smiling after that.  I laughed so hard I almost cried.  I still took about 200 photos all said and done before I settled on this one, but most of the retakes were for reasons other than my facial expression (this series will touch on those too).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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Finally, a photo I’m not embarrassed to show the world!<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


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Through this process I realized that going into a photo session the #1 most important thing you can do to prepare is to think about what makes you and your family smile, whether it’s a pleasant memory, a funny inside joke, a vacation you’re looking forward to, bubbles, etc.  It seemed so obvious I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before.  <\/span><\/p>\n

What makes people laugh and smile is pretty unique to them.  As photographers we do our best to elicit that, but a little introspection about your sense of humor can go a long way toward having a photo of yourself that you would gladly put next to the logo on Google.<\/span><\/p>\n

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So maybe you’ll never really think you look 100% awesome in a photo because you’re an adult and a woman (thank you media) but it is possible to have a photo you’re proud to share. This is the first article in a series called “How to Look Great in Any Photo: Pointer #1 Happy Thoughts.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/debralwallace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/debralwallace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/debralwallace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debralwallace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debralwallace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/debralwallace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/debralwallace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debralwallace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debralwallace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}