Push your forehead toward the camera

Because the thing that ruins the photo is the opposite move, and you make it without knowing. Seven separate conversations — the widest agreement in these conversations — say that pushing the forehead toward the camera, with the chin tucked slightly down rather than up, sharpens the jaw line and takes the double chin out of the picture, because it changes how the light hits the face; three conversations link a professional portrait photographer’s demonstration of it. Four conversations explain the reflex: when people smile for a camera they push the head back, and the tuck counteracts that. Two conversations describe it as sticking the forehead out and down while you smile, and two say a slight tilt of the head to one side finishes it. Single accounts give the physical cues: if you are much taller than the camera, push until your ears are past your shoulders; purse the lips a fraction and relax the lower lip, so a smile does not show a row of bottom teeth; and narrow the eyes slightly — one account calls it a squinch — so they look intent rather than startled. One caution says it feels unnatural at first and then becomes instinctive, and one says it can look strained without practice, and two say some of these expressions look strange overdone — how far to push is a gap the accounts named; this page’s own line is that it is a small move, not a lunge. This page checked the mechanics against what portrait photographers teach, and they hold. It is not about weight: one correction says people of average weight have double chins in photographs because of bone and skin, and three accounts say the same about themselves.

The people here corrected it, and the correction is worth more than the trick. Three conversations say to press the tongue up into the palate, or behind the front teeth, to tighten the neck, and two more repeat it; a correction backed by two accounts says that pressing the tongue up actually pushes the flesh under the chin out and makes it look worse, and that the movement that works is tightening the throat as if you were about to swallow, or drawing the middle of the tongue up into the soft palate. Three conversations give a version of the same tension that is easier to find: make the sound ‘ng’, as at the end of ‘sing’, and hold the tightness that appears at the back of the mouth where it meets the throat. One exchange across three conversations, two accounts to one, is whether the tongue trick works at all; the two say it defines the jaw, the one says it makes the chin worse for some faces, and the accounts’ decider is your own anatomy — try it in the mirror and watch, because you can see the answer. This page’s reading — not the accounts’ — is that these are supporting moves and the forehead is the main one. A second correction in these conversations is about the person holding the camera, and it settles most of the next question: the height of the photographer does not matter, because a photographer can kneel, or lift the phone, or step back — the angle is chosen, not inherited.

Higher for the face, lower for the body, and the people here argue which you want. One exchange, four accounts to one, says to ask a taller person to take the photo so the camera looks slightly down at you, which hides under the chin; the one says a shorter photographer makes you look taller and more imposing. Three more exchanges, one account each way, argue the same thing about angle — one says looking down at a camera at shoulder height gives a better jaw line than a high camera, and that the problem is posture, not height. The accounts do not give a single decider; one side says posture and chin position matter more than camera height. One account gives the conventions from headshot work — a little below eye level to convey authority or lengthen the legs — and the account says it does not carry over to a casual double-chin problem — and one caution says good portraits, one account says, are generally taken at eye level, which is why photographers bend their knees. This page carries the correction as the answer: you do not need a taller friend, because the person with the phone can raise it, kneel, or step back; ask them to hold it a little above your eye line and a step further away than feels natural, and do the forehead move into it. If you are the tallest in the group and the camera is always below you, one account says to push the head forward until the ears pass the shoulders, so the camera does not see under the jaw — and one caution says that if it does, the whole effect is lost.

Smaller adjustments, and the accounts have a short list. Three separate conversations say pulling the shoulders back and standing out of a slouch does a great deal for how the body reads in a photo. Two conversations shift the weight onto one leg with the other foot a little forward and the shoulders slightly uneven, so the body is angled to the camera rather than square to it — one says it avoids the stomach folds a square stance creates; two say to keep the elbows a little away from the body, so the upper arm is not pressed flat and wide against the side; one account says, for women trying to look slimmer, to flex the stomach rather than suck it in. On the face: two conversations say to find your better side by photographing both profiles and practising your smile in a mirror, with and without teeth; two say to look a fraction above the lens — one account puts it at about two inches above centre at arm’s length — or through the camera to something far away, so the eyes are not crossed or fixed; two say the best advice for the original question was simply to be natural and smile with your teeth. Single accounts give the timing: think of something genuinely funny five to ten seconds before the shutter, because a smile held longer than that sets; look away and turn to the camera just as the picture is taken, which one account says looks less frozen. One exchange, one to two, argues whether a slight purse of the lips is a technique or a duck face; the decider is the degree, and the accounts’ line is that subdued is a technique and exaggerated is a joke.

When your face is not the face it was designed for, or when you have decided you would rather not. One contraindication says the forehead move exaggerates a prominent forehead, and two accounts say so of their own; one caution says the move may not work through a very dense beard; one caution says that dropping the chin without bringing the head forward blends the jaw into the neck, and another that bringing the chin up while leaning forward exposes the neck to the camera and enlarges it — the move is forward and slightly down, both parts; lighting — which also shadows the chin — is a gap the accounts named; and one caution notes that a photograph used to demonstrate the move was also retouched, which is why this page promises a jaw line and not a transformation. One correction says people of average weight get double chins from bone structure or loose skin, three accounts say they get one in photos without being overweight, and the accounts say the move works at every body size. And one account in these conversations says something this page keeps on the page: they would rather be photographed as they actually look, without tricks, and call it being themselves — which is a position, not a mistake, and if it is yours you can close this page having lost nothing. A strand of these conversations is not about photography at all but about whether it is acceptable to comment on other people’s bodies; three accounts here said it is not, and this page stands with them, and that strand is not carried here except as this sentence.