Take the photo after the pose ends
Four conversations say the real smile arrives the second people think you have finished. Keep shooting, then the word swap and the don’t-smile trick.
Built from people who take the family photos and people who hate being in them: thirty conversations, 426 accounts, 2012 to 2026. From the four conversations that keep shooting after the pose, the six that tell people not to smile, the ten that swap the word and the three-to-three argument about which word, the five that say think of someone, the three that say laugh at nothing, and the one correction about passports that turned out to be true in one country and false in another.
There is a version of this that happens at every family table. Someone stands up with a phone, everyone arranges their face, the phone comes down, and the picture shows six people doing the thing they do for cameras — the same tight smile each of them has hated in every photograph since school. The people in these conversations, thirty of them with 426 accounts between 2012 and 2026, are the source here.
Keep shooting for the few seconds after they think you have finished.
Take the photograph everyone is braced for first, and say thank you; the one you keep comes after it.
The photo after the pose
Four separate conversations 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. One account says the second photo, taken immediately after the first, catches the exact instant people let go of the formal face. The only requirement, in one account’s words, is that you are ready — a natural smile lasts about as long as it takes to notice it, and one account’s major frustration is a subject finding the perfect face while the photographer waits too long to press the button; three accounts in one note say missing the moment through slow timing is how a good face is lost.
Two things about the method the accounts say plainly. One caution says a basic camera may not shoot fast enough to do it, so on a phone hold the button down or use its burst setting. And it costs pictures: one caution and two accounts in one exchange say the method fills a phone with unusable frames that someone then has to sort, and the person shooting answers that with digital film many bad frames are cheaper than one missed good moment, and that people enjoy finding the unplanned ones. For a large group arranged carefully, one exchange of one account to one says the method works against you — the second the pose ends people drift apart, and the composition you built is gone — so for a big posed group take the pose seriously and use the tricks below to break the faces while they are still standing where you put them.
Making them break
Six separate conversations use one instruction and it is the opposite of the one you would expect: tell them not to smile. Children especially cannot hold a straight face once they have been told to, and the laugh that breaks through is the picture. Three separate conversations use the same idea backwards — tell them to smile more, then more, then abruptly ‘no, not that much’ — and shoot the laugh at the correction. One objection says the instruction sounds like a drill sergeant, and the answer given is that the comparison is a joke about the strictness, not about whether it works. One caution says it fails on a child whose parents do it at every photo; one photographer was told by a child that his parents tried it at every photo and it had not worked once.
Ten separate conversations agree that ‘cheese’ is the wrong word — one account says it pulls the mouth into a grimace, and two accounts in one note say telling children to say it produces bad photographs — and they argue about the right one, an argument rendered below with its counts. The accounts’ own lists run from nonsense words to words for bodily functions to words you would not say in a school hall, and this page prints none of the rude ones; the category is what carries. Two separate conversations say a silly insult, mock outrage or a bad joke does the same work, and three separate conversations say that for children specifically, asking them to tell you a joke or calling them a chicken beats any instruction. One account says the best word is the one with a private meaning for the person in front of you; one account says with adults a plain ‘yes’ produces a more natural mouth than anything else they have tried. Four accounts in one note and seven in another say some version of the word swap has worked for them across ages and relationships.
Counting is the quieter version of the same trick. Four single accounts 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, and two accounts in one note say the long count has worked for them. One caution says it irritates people who just want the picture taken, and one account trying it was told to hurry up in terms this page will not repeat. One account has a related rule for dogs: if the dog will not look at the camera, have everyone look where the dog is looking, and the picture holds together anyway.
The cautions on all of this are in the first question below and they are not decoration. Three cautions with six accounts between them say 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 account stopped using a joke about nappies after a family shoot where the father had a medical condition the joke landed on; and one account says a photographer who uses sexual words on other people’s children will not be working for long. That last is this page’s line as well: with children who are not yours, nonsense words are the whole list.
When it is your face
The tricks above are for the person holding the camera. If you are the one whose face locks, the accounts have a different set, and it is in the second question below in full: think of a specific person or moment rather than trying to move your face, which five separate conversations say builds a different smile from the assembled one; laugh out loud at nothing just before the shutter, which three separate conversations say produces a face that is hard to fake badly; narrow the eyes a little, which three separate conversations say is the difference between a smile and a dead-eyed one — with one account saying the reverse, that a natural face does not squint at all. One account says none of it works for them while they can see the camera, because the camera is what freezes the face, so for that person the answer is the first section of this page, applied by somebody else.
What none of this does
The gaps in these conversations are the hard cases: 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. None of those is answered here, and one caution says something worth hearing before you try any of the tricks on someone who finds cameras hard: for a person with social anxiety, advice about producing a smile can work against what they actually want, which is a photograph that looks like them. Ask them what they want the picture to be before you start counting.
If the photograph is for a passport or an identity card, none of this page applies, and the third question below says what the British and American official pages ask for. Both want the mouth closed.
The community disagrees on this one
Ten separate conversations agree that ‘cheese’ is the wrong word and argue about the right one. One exchange runs three accounts to three across five conversations: a plain word that ends in a smile, or a word chosen for the laugh or the feeling. Both, with the counts.
A plain word that ends in a smile
Three accounts across three conversations say a short ordinary word — ‘money’, ‘knee’ — leaves the mouth in a more natural, relaxed shape than ‘cheese’ and gives the person nothing to perform. One account says words ending in an ‘a’ sound shape the mouth into a smile, and one objection answers that it depends on the vowel before it, so the rule does not hold across words.
3 independent accounts
A word chosen for the laugh or the feeling
Three accounts across two conversations say ‘money’ can land flat or worse depending on the person, that ‘knee’ is boring, and that the words that work do so because of what the lips do or what the word means to the person — a warm word, a rude one, an absurd one. One account says the same word shouted in a monster voice breaks through a bad mood; one account says a silly insult or a bad joke does the same job.
3 independent accounts
The deciders the accounts give are the audience — a child, an adult, a room full of strangers — the culture the person grew up in, and what the word already means to them. Nothing here settles it, and one account’s answer is to skip the general rule and use the word that is funny to this person. Whatever you pick, the cautions in the first question apply, and with other people’s children the list is nonsense words only.
Common questions
Which word should I say instead of ‘cheese’?
The accounts do not agree, and the argument is rendered above with its counts: some want a plain word that ends in a smile shape, some want a word that gets a laugh, and one account says the word that works is the one with a private meaning for the person in front of you — a favourite food, an inside joke. The failure they describe has one shape: one account says ‘cheese’ pulls the mouth into a grimace, two accounts in one note say telling children to say it produces bad photos, and one account still has a school photograph of themselves looking baffled because the photographer tried a new word they did not understand. The mechanism, in one account’s words, is that the person is reacting to something funny rather than performing for the lens. So the rule under the argument is: pick a word the person will find funny or easy, not a word you find funny — three cautions with six accounts between them say a rude word in the wrong room gets silence or a disgusted face, one account says a joke that touches a medical need can land on exactly the person it hurts, and one account says a photographer who uses sexual words on other people’s children will not be a photographer for long. With children who are not yours, nonsense words are the whole list; one account offers ‘princess pickle’ and ‘ninja monkey’. One account adds a rule from another country entirely — in China the word is ‘eggplant’, for the shape it makes of the mouth — which says the trick is older and wider than any one word.
It isn’t the photographer, it’s me. My face does the same fake thing in every photo.
Two accounts in one note say the same, and one account calls it an ingrained habit that has to be broken on purpose by changing the prompt or the angle rather than trying harder. The tricks the accounts give for the person in front of the lens rather than behind it: five separate conversations say think of a specific person or a specific funny moment rather than trying to move your face — the smile that follows a thought is built differently from the one you assemble; three separate conversations 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 account who cannot smile on command says a forced audible laugh is the only thing that has ever worked; three separate conversations say narrow the eyes slightly as you smile, because a smile that reaches only the mouth reads as dead-eyed — though one account says the opposite, that a natural face does not squint at all, and the two are not reconciled here. One account says look at the person holding the phone rather than at the lens; one says drop the jaw and lower the chin rather than pulling the corners of the mouth up; one photographer says the smile comes from thinking of something happy and the angle comes from pushing the chin out and down. One account says none of it works for them while the camera is visible, because the camera itself is what freezes the face, so the distraction only works when they cannot see it — which is the case for the photo after the pose, and for the one account who hires a photographer who shoots candidly rather than directing. If you have to stand in bright sun, one account closes their eyes and turns to the light for fifteen seconds before looking back, so the squint has gone by the time the shutter goes.
Can I smile in a passport photo?
It depends on the country, and one correction in these conversations says the rule was changed to allow it, which is true of one country and not of another. The United Kingdom’s official guidance, checked in 2026, asks for a plain expression with the mouth closed and the eyes open and visible. The United States State Department’s guidance, as far as its published wording could be checked this year, allows a neutral expression or a natural smile with the mouth closed and the eyes open, and no exaggerated expression. One caution in these conversations says 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. Nothing else on this page is for an ID photo.
Full tip: https://findangel.org/tips/take-the-photo-after-the-pose-ends · FindAngel.org — free, always.