Fact: Even Gisele Bundchen gets fat-arm in photographs.  Translation: posing can make a difference.  Here’s a shorty short short summary of quick fixes to sizzle in those summer sexographs.  I mean, summer photographs.

Generally:

• body parts closer to the camera will appear larger than those farther away
• highlighted areas will appear larger/more prominent than shadowed areas

THE FACE

What to do: chin up (not too high), turn to the side (slightly)

Why chin up?  Chin down can mess with your face proportions in an unattractive way.  The forehead is already naturally wider than the chin.  With your chin down, the forehead is closer to the camera, and the chin is in the shadows and farther from the camera.  Also, when your chin is up, the area is stretched so you minimize double chin.

Full face frontal can be fatal.  The short of it, you risk big face/moon face/pie face.  Angling your head to the side adds light and shadows to your face creating depth and definition.  If you have the time and the will, you can quickly contour/sculpt your face with makeup.  Highlight areas of your face where the sun would naturally kiss–forehead, bridge of nose, bow of lip, chin, cheekbones.  Bronze/darken areas you want to minimize, and around areas you want to define–down sides around bridge of nose, outer edge of face, hollows of cheeks.

Highlight:      

Bronze/darken:

THE BODY

What to do: turn to the side (one foot in front of the other, leaning into back foot), arms slightly away from body (one arm in back triangle formation, if possible)

Why turn to the side?  I’ll let the photos below do the talking.

Front view:  

 

Side view:

   

Keep at least a sliver of space between your body and arms.  If you don’t, your arm fat will spread and flatten out against your body.  The sound of that sentence alone should deter you from ever forgetting this.

Flattened:                                  

     

Sliver of space:

      

Back arm triangle formation in action.  Gisele knows what’s up.  Put your hand on your hip, angling the elbow back.  That triangulated arm now has something to do, and is farther from the camera.  Don’t forget the sliver of space between the other arm and your body.

That’s all I have for now.  Why?  Because the first time I finished this blog entry, I refreshed the window and lost everything.  Seriously, I got this really adorable message from WordPress:

and then, all my work was gone.

Pose like a rock star,

BTB