How to Take Your Best Progress Photos

Making your photo taking time as SIMPLE as possible.  Find a good location and set up an easy, repeatable method for consistent photos.  My most basic guidelines:

  • ABSOLUTELY NO SELFIES under any circumstances.  Buy a cheap tripod or use something (chair, stool, etc) to get your phone off the ground and around waist height.
  • No “relaxed” photos where you’re standing there in front of the camera.  If it’s a muscle and the camera can see it, flex it (this is a tricky skill, expect to suck at it for a bit if this is new)
  • Standardize the time you take photos.  Fasted first thing in the morning is typically your best bet, but your mileage may vary.

Camera Positioning and Placement (Easiest!)

We’re going to make this as easy and repeatable as possible by setting things like similar to how I show it in the photos below.  The very simple process:

    1. Identify a space in your house where a “bright space” is separated from a “dark space” by a door frame.  This may be a room/hallway like I’m showing here, two rooms, a room and a closet, or even inside/outside using an exterior door (outside being the bright area, depending on time of day)
    2. Make the bright area as bright as possible (turn on all  lights).  Turn off all lights in the dark space.
    3. Position camera/tripod in the bright space, close enough to you that YOU fill the whole frame and just the edges of the door frame might be visible to the camera (like 4 feet in front of you is about right)
    4. Set a 10 second timer in the camera app
    5. Take pics!

As easy as that!  The samples at the bottom of this page use different lighting/setup techniques and that’s fine – experiment, but use this method if you just easy, fast, and good!

The setup

The result

Posing Examples

Use the standard quarter turn poses shown below.  Pay attention to foot positioning and how your arms are placed.  You may have taken photos differently in the past or seen other poses elsewhere, ignore those.  These are the poses I want to see – give it your best effort.  If this is new, the poses will be rough and that’s fine – don’t chase perfection right now.

Contest prep clients, feel free to include category specific poses as well if you know them.