Aiming Your Camera for Portraits

If you’ve ever seen iPhone selfie pros taking selfies, you’ll notice they all share one particular technique: they hold the phone out and up over their head, aim it down, and look up at the camera. Why? Because shooting from up high simply makes better looking images. It strengthens the jawline, pulls the skin tight, and creates a much more flattering view overall. That’s why, when we’re taking photos of other people, we ideally shoot from a slightly higher angle, shooting down toward them. Now, depending on your height, and the height of the person you’re shooting, it may not always be possible, so in that case, we try to at least shoot at their eye level. If we can get higher, bonus points. If we can’t, eye level is as good as we’ll get, but that’s not bad. Just make sure you’re not shooting from below, aiming up—it’s the least-flattering point of view (unless, of course, you want to get even with the person for an actual or perceived wrong they did to you at some point, in which, by all means, it’s time for a double-whammy: don’t only shoot from a low angle, but also put a reflector down low to bounce unflattering light back into their face. Hey, they had it coming). Of course, if you’re trying something creative, you can shoot from any angle, but for the “tried-and-true” method of where to shoot from, this slightly-higher-angle (they sit, you sit; they stand, you stand) concept works really well.