How do I take photos people like, and look like myself in them?

Three pages in this library are about a photograph and what it is for. Take the photo after the pose ends is for the person holding the phone at the family table. Push your forehead toward the camera is for the person who looks fine in the mirror and wrong in every picture. Photograph the haircut from the back is for the one good haircut you have been trying to describe ever since. The first two are about faces; the third is about a photograph as an instruction. Each names the reader it is not for, and one carries a line about other people’s children that comes first.

With children who are not yours, nonsense words are the whole list. Take the photo after the pose ends says that plainly, as its own line as well as people’s: some people warn that a rude or shocking word does not suit every room, can backfire on an unreceptive audience, and can draw disgust rather than a smile, one person stopped using a joke about nappies after a family shoot where the father had a medical condition the joke landed on, and one person says a photographer who uses sexual words on other people’s children will not be working for long. Some people add a caution the page says belongs there anyway: a photograph of a child posted publicly carries risks, attention from strangers and background detail about your home, that the moment of taking it does not.

Keep shooting for the few seconds after they think you have finished. Some people say the same thing from behind the camera: the natural expression arrives the moment people believe the picture has been taken. The shoulders drop, somebody turns to somebody else, somebody laughs at how stiff they all were, and that frame is the one they will keep. Take the photograph everyone is braced for first, say thank you, and the one you keep comes after it. One person warns that a basic camera may not shoot fast enough, so on a phone hold the button down or use its burst setting; some people warn that the method fills a phone with unusable frames that someone then has to sort. For a large group arranged carefully, one discussion says the method works against you, because the second the pose ends people drift apart and the composition you built is gone, so for a big posed group the page says to take the pose seriously and use its tricks to break the faces while people are still standing where you put them. Many people use one instruction, and it is the opposite of the one you would expect: tell them not to smile, because children especially cannot hold a straight face once told to, and the laugh that breaks through is the picture; some use it backwards, tell them to smile more, then more, then abruptly ‘no, not that much’, and shoot the laugh at the correction. Many people agree that ‘cheese’ is the wrong word, one person says it pulls the mouth into a grimace and some people say telling children to say it produces bad photographs, and they argue about the right one: a plain word that ends in a smile shape, ‘money’, ‘knee’, against a word chosen for the laugh or the feeling, and one person says the word that works is the one with a private meaning for the person in front of you. Some people say keep counting past three, into fives, into negatives, repeating numbers, or give the person a task like counting to a high number, so their attention is on the task and not on their face. One person has a rule for dogs: if the dog will not look at the camera, have everyone look where the dog is looking.

When it is your face that locks. The same page has a different set for the person in front of the lens. Many people say think of a specific person or a specific funny moment rather than trying to move your face, because the smile that follows a thought is built differently from the one you assemble. Some people say laugh out loud at nothing just before the shutter, because the face that follows a real exhale is hard to fake badly, and one person who cannot smile on command says a forced audible laugh is the only thing that has ever worked. Some people say narrow the eyes slightly as you smile, because a smile that reaches only the mouth reads as dead-eyed, though one person says the opposite and the page does not reconcile them. One person says none of it works while they can see the camera, because the camera itself is what freezes the face, so for that person the answer is the photo after the pose, taken by somebody else. If you have to stand in bright sun, one person closes their eyes and turns to the light for fifteen seconds before looking back. One caution the page carries for the person who finds cameras hard: for someone with social anxiety, advice about producing a smile can work against what they actually want, which is a photograph that looks like them, so ask them what they want the picture to be before you start counting. For a passport, none of it applies: the page checked the British and American official pages in 2026 and both want the mouth closed, the UK asking for a plain expression with the mouth closed and the eyes open and visible, the US allowing a neutral expression or a natural smile with the mouth closed and the eyes open, and no exaggerated expression; one person warns that ID rules vary by country and change, so check your own country’s current page before you sit down, and assume a closed mouth is the safe default.

Push your forehead toward the camera, and let the chin come slightly down. Push your forehead toward the camera says many people fixed the doubled chin and the vanished neck with a move that feels absurd: the whole head forward, as if peering at something, and the chin a little down, not up, and the jaw line appears. Some people explain the reflex it counteracts: when people smile for a camera they push the head back. Some people link a professional portrait photographer showing it, and the page says it checked the mechanics against what portrait photographers teach and they hold. One person says it feels unnatural at first and becomes instinctive, some say some of these expressions look strange overdone, and the page’s own line is that it is a small move, not a lunge. The tongue trick that some people repeat, pressing the tongue up into the palate to tighten the neck, is carried as people’s correction rather than as the trick: some people point out pressing the tongue up pushes the flesh under the chin out, and what works is tightening the throat as if you were about to swallow, which some people say you can find by holding the ‘ng’ at the end of ‘sing’. The camera argument, higher or lower, a taller friend or a shorter one, is split down the middle, then one each way three times, and a correction ends it: the person holding the phone can kneel, lift it or step back, so the angle is chosen, not inherited; a little above your eye line flatters the face, a little below lengthens the body and shows the neck. For the rest of you, some people say pull the shoulders back and stand out of a slouch, two shift the weight onto one leg with the body angled to the camera rather than square to it, and some keep the elbows a little away from the body. One correction stands over that page: this is not about weight. A double chin in a photograph is a matter of bone structure, skin and camera angle, some people say they get one in photos without being overweight, and people say the move works at every body size. A strand of those discussions about commenting on other people’s bodies is not carried, except to say some people objected to it and the page stands with them.

Photograph the haircut you liked from the back and the sides, a week on, in daylight, and write under it what the barber did. Photograph the haircut from the back is many people saying a single face-on selfie is what fails, because the stylist cannot see the back or the sides in it. Front, both sides, back is the set the people there settled on; some people say natural daylight, not a dim room, and one person adds no filter, because a filter changes the colour and hides the texture. Some people say the cut you like is the one a few weeks later, once it has settled and grown a fraction, so a photo taken in the chair captures a version you may not want. Some people point out that you may already have one, the licence or passport photo taken the week after a good cut, and two have the barber take the pictures at the end of the appointment. Then the second finding, from some people: ask, at the end of a cut you like, exactly what was done, the clipper guard number on the sides, whether it was a taper or a fade and how high, the length left on top, and write it down under the photo, because a stylist who will not copy a picture will usually execute a specification. The page checked the guard fractions: a number one is an eighth of an inch, a two a quarter, a four a half, an eight a full inch, and a person there who thought a one meant an inch was corrected; one person points out a metal guard of a given number cuts shorter than a plastic guard of the same number, and some people say to say whether the guard is metal or plastic as well as the number; the page could not verify the exact difference, only that guards of the same number differ between makers, so give the length in words if you can. The photo has a rival as loud as itself: many people say the real fix is one barber kept for years, who remembers your head and for whom ‘the same as last time’ is a real instruction; some people argue whether even a regular is remembered, and what decides it, people say, is whether you are staying or switching. And the photo fails: many people describe a stylist with the picture in hand cutting something else, some people warn that a photo does nothing against a stylist without the skill or a head and hair unlike the one in the frame, and the people there did not resolve whether that is the stylist’s fault or the client’s expectation. One person’s test survives all of it, and the page keeps it: before they cut, can they say back to you what they are about to do?

Who these pages are not for. The pose page names its hard cases as gaps: a person who will not play along or is hostile, a child too young for words, a baby, somebody who is crying or genuinely unhappy, a teenager immune to every prompt, a group that has to react at the same instant, lighting, camera settings, and editing a forced smile afterwards. The forehead page says cautions set its limits, a prominent forehead the move can exaggerate and a dense beard that hides the jaw line anyway, and it keeps one position from the people there that it respects: some people would rather be photographed exactly as they stand, and that is not a problem to be fixed. The haircut page says that if your photo shows styled hair, straightened, blown out, held with product, the cut cannot supply that by itself and you will be styling it every morning, so photograph it dry or say what you did; that if your hair has never held a style without product, some people say the whole premise fails because there was no good day to photograph; and that colour is a different appointment and a different page, where one person warns that words like ‘caramel’ or ‘burgundy’ mean different things to different people and a visual matters even more.