7 Tricks to Remember when Posing for Photographs ...

Chin up, girl! Don’t let the camera snap a “Is there a hole I could hide in?” version of you! If you chose to be in the picture, make it a darn good one. Lowering your chin and/or twisting your neck in an awkward position will make your neck look short, stubby and wrinkled, plus you might look like you have double chin. Be a ballerina, move your head gracefully and let the camera snap a photo of you in your “I’m royalty!” pose.

If you happened to be sitting when somebody decides to take a photo of you, remember to cross your legs. Tightening those muscles makes your legs look thinner and more toned as opposed to that two-soggy-meat-loafs-splattered-on-the-couch look. Don’t get me wrong, that has nothing to do with weight, relaxed muscles are responsible for this effect. However, when legs are crossed, your whole body looks much better – hips look wider and your gorgeous hourglass shows. And one more trick – if you want your legs to look not only slimmer but longer too, don’t cross just them at a 90 degrees angle but tilt them a bit instead.

Remember those two meat loafs? Well, you don’t your arms looking like them either and, in case you press them tightly against your body, that look is exactly what you’re going to get. This trick is actually, a very new thing for me and… well… as it usually goes in my world, I had to learn from my own mistakes. Don’t worry though, no complex moves or special skills are required to pose correctly and help your arms look gorgeous – just place them on your hips or do anything else that looks and feels natural.

Now, this one is very hard, especially if it’s a group photo with more than one female on it. Thirty seconds for each one of them to strike a pose, multiplied with the number of girls… you do the math. By the time you hear that click, what used to be a fresh facial expression will turn into a frozen, confused grimace. Now, if you want to avoid this (and I’m sure you do), relax your facial muscles and don’t force them to be in the same position for such a long time. Wait until every person has taken its place and then smile just a few seconds before the picture is taken.

I’ve described this pose before so I’m not going to go into tiny details now. If you want to appear slimmer, the best thing to do is turn to the camera sideways, like celebs do on the red carpet. One leg in front of the other, of course, and turn your upper body to the camera. This pose gives the body a beautiful shape and makes the “arm on hip” trick look like a natural, logical thing to do. Two birds with one stone!

My mom is a pro in making tall, normally proportioned people look like something that would probably be named girouse... that is, if a giraffe and mouse had ever managed to successfully mate and produce an offspring. So, if your photographer is not a pro and you don’t want a pair of short, chubby legs attached to something that looks like an incredibly tall torso, huge head and shoulders that would make any bodybuilder go green with envy, explain him how to use that little square that appears on the center of the screen. “X marks the spot” but square marks the center of the photo, so in order for you to look your best, the center of your body must be in that square.

In fact, all neutral colors can make you look slimmer, as long as you color coordinate your outfit wisely. Being dressed in black from head to toe is a little bit boring and it can be a disadvantage and make you literally disappear by blending in with dark backgrounds. If you, in the other hand, combine an entirely white or gray outfit, you will avoid blending in and looking “as big as the wall behind you” and you’ll get the same slimming effect you’d normally expect from black.

Hope this helps ladies. Tell me, do you already use some of these posing tricks or you still haven’t tried any of them?