Becoming More Photogenic (Looking Better On Camera)

A person is said to be "photogenic" if they just naturally look good in photos. There's an idea floating around that "photogenicness" is some separate property completely different from beauty-in-person. Me, I think this idea is junk!

I've seen guys and girls who look perfectly fine, and they say, "I can't be in photos, I'm not very photogenic". What does that even mean? Does their skin reflect light in some peculiar way, imperceptible to the human eye but picked up by cameras? Nonsense!

I got to thinking about this after posting my Pictures from Japan series: what is "photogenic" really all about, and if it exists, how can we change our "photogenicity"?

I looked back at my own photographs and realized that I used to be very "non-photogenic". But flipping through the pictures, I noticed I got better over time. I looked over a long time period, during which my hair went from short to long, to short again and long again and short once more. The time period covered beautiful Summer tans and icky Winter pales. Clothing upgrades and downgrades. If I could plot my "photogenicity" on a chart, it would look like the stock market: ups and downs, but in the bigger picture, generally going up.

So then I asked, what was causing this? What was my "photography life" like during all that time? The answer is that I was enthusiastically taking pictures everywhere. And not just taking them, but sharing them, posting them on facebook, tagging myself in them, and so on. I was "owning" them. So, here's what I think about "photogenicity"...

Photogenicity is not some innate feature. There is no "photogenicity gene". Rather, if anything, it's a set of acquired skills. Skills like:

• When and how to smile for the camera (answer: less often than many people think!)
• What kinds of poses to assume, and how to assume them
• What direction to look, face, turn your eyes, etc.
• What sort of posture to use
• How to position yourself among other people, if it's a group photo
• How to position yourself relative to props or features behind you

Like any skill, it's not something you want to be thinking about while using it. You don't think about walking when you walk, you usually don't even think about driving when you drive, even though driving is rather complicated and dangerous. You just let the skills flow forth on their own, naturally.

All the skills that people collectively bundle into "being photogenic", they're all just normal skills, and like anything else, you get better with practice. So the answer to the question, "how to be more photogenic", is just to have lots of pictures taken of you throughout the course of your adventures and everyday life. Don't even worry thinking about all the various skills you're using, just observe the finished photographs and your subconscious mind will gradually learn what to do when the camera's flashing.

I went on Google and looked up "how to be photogenic" before sitting down to write this article. There's a lot of specific tips there, like turning your face at an angle to hide blemishes, looking slightly above the camera.. even "keep your tongue behind your teeth" (wtf?). I suppose these are good tips, but when the camera's rolling, you don't want to be standing there going over a mental checklist. "Let's see, is my tongue behind my teeth? Roger that, okay now gotta look above the camera.. check.. now to adjust my face angle.. whoops now I'm not looking above the camera, gotta fix that.. now to fix my.. *FLASH* Oh no! I wasn't ready!" I guarantee if this is what's going through your mind, you'll come out looking slightly more awkward than Steve Urkel. Just like when you're driving, you can't think about all the little rules simultaneously, they just have to be hardwired in your subconscious mind.

The worst possible action, is to say "I'm not photogenic" and turn down an opportunity to be photographed. Do this all the time, and you'll never BE photogenic. That would be like if a 15 year old said, "I can't drive! I suck at driving! I've never been a good driver in my life, no way am I getting behind the wheel!" Well, you have to start sometime!

Part of practicing the big bag of skills, which collectively get called "photogenic", is going out and getting yourself in situations worthy of being photo'd. It's no coincidence, that people with interesting, exciting lives look better in pictures-- and in real life, too!

I'm hardly the most photogenic guy in the world, but I consider myself good enough, and I know I'm getting better and better. In a few years I'll be able to just post a fully clothed picture of myself on here and I'll get a hundred thousand visitors from women just to see my shining face. But to get there, I'm gonna get myself in lots of adventures and misadventures and see how many memory cards I can flood with my gorgeous self.

In an effort to further test and study all this, as well as just to improve my own photo skill set, starting today I'm going to create one of those "Picture Every Day For A Year" movies, like this really famous one from YouTube (although he did it for six years):



I invite all my readers to join me in the "Picture Every Day For A Year" project. Just copy the youtube video above. If nothing else, it'll give you a hell of an awesome video for your children someday.

Here are some other articles I've written for you to enjoy. Read them all and it'll counts as 6 credits worth of hard science in any U.S. university.
Pictures from Japan (A glorious 5 part series)
Is Society Biased Against Smart People?
Real-Life Tool-Assisted Speedruns