I’ve been asked a few times about doing a Photography Guide for beauty bloggers, about using the camera and posing too, so I’ve rumbled something together for you.
Hopefully you will find some tips to help you get better pictures for your blog or personal use!
Ya ready? Then let’s learn the things Richard Avedon would never have taught you.
1. Do the dour duckface
Every self respecting beauty blogger needs to perfect the dour duckface.
What is the dour duckface?
Its the instant non chalant, sex-bomb look.
We remove any trace of happiness or joy from our face, then stick those lips down and out to create the infamous duck lips.
Now – some of us are better at this than others. I’ve noticed that you can stick your lips out better the thinner they are – they sit flatter so you may want to remove those collagen lip implants to truly pull this off.
Step 1.
Learn to purse your lips. We naturally purse their lips when we are thinking about someone or something which has much displeased us.
Examples:
“Did that bitch just copy my idea again?” *purses lips*
Man = “Do you want to go back for that lipstick?”
Beauty Blogger = “No. Its fine.” *purses lips*
Here I am demonstrating a mild lip purse – its important to practise this move a few times to make sure you aren’t just POUTING, and that you are PURSING.
But this is not enough. We need to add more sour to the puss. Continue thinking about what you were thinking about then imagine the worst case scenario…see how your lips naturally want to do…*that*?
For me, this is enough duck to the face – you may want to further push your lips out if you want to make yourself look more socially aware or sexually available.
Remember – you want the shape of the lip to be flat and to push down slightly like a quack quack duck. You may want to use a small mirror to make sure the angle is correct and take some test shots to make sure the level of ducking is enough.
Add Fingers…
Any self respecting sex bomb or Asian girls knows she has to add two meaningless fingers to the side of her cheek for instant appeal.
This does not make you look like a vain, insipid idiot. This will not make you look like a pre-pubescent child who still wears a training bra. No. This makes you look…cute. Like Hello Kitty.
As you can see, my nails are a fail as they aren’t adorned in some garish nail polish and stuck on jewels but forgive me – I was too busy practising my pout.
Verdict:
Duck Face a Go Go
2. Screw Composition
Framing properly is for losers. There’s no need to make sure your your subject is in the centre of the picture so people can actually see what you are photographing, or even neatly to the side of the picture.
Be random and wild – people don’t need to know what they are looking at.
For example –
Keep the mystery up levels up – keep them guessing.
This next photo, taken to demonstrate the texture of a new eyeshadow, is also very effectively framed:
Verdict:
Frame wisely, frame well
3. Unfocus everything
In the old days, photographers used to say that something called focusing was important. I say – poppycock!
Super blurry photographs give a sense of engima – and that is just what we want.
Wrong – this picture is too in focus:
Now it looks more like…something:
Same goes for eyes. This is too stark:
This picture – like the cover of a Japanese Horror DVD is just perfect.
4. If in doubt, brighten and lighten
Every self respecting budding photographer needs the services of Photoshop or a similar, cheaper photo editing software. One of the most useful functions for us is the brighten and contrast tools.
In order to make out skin look smoother, we’re going to go through the perfect, totally natural technique.
Start with a photograph (see how the lips are pursed?).
This picture is for too human toned. We want to lighten the skin to add more clarity to it. We want to looking like angels that have just come down to earth for a brief visit.
Use the slider and push up the brightness a little until you get this:
See how our skin is already looking smoother? Who needs skincare and sleep – Photoshop will fix everything!
Let’s add more
MOAR!
Yep – once again the skin is looking more and more alien like smooth and model like.
But we haven’t taken this far enough – I feel we still need more skin smoothing effects.
Here I’ve added more brightness and some contrast.
This is perfect:
As you can see, my skin is as flawless as ever – my radiance has been reflected.
This is particularly useful if you need a picture for an online dating site because your date will be extremely happy when he realises that you do have a nose and mouth in person.
5. Get the cat to do it
If in doubt, pass the gauntlet to your beautiful fluff ball – I do. And did you even notice she was reviewing mascara for me? No.
The only issue is that cats don’t have thumbs so it can be tricky to hold the camera and take a picture.
I would suggest getting two cats so one can hold the camera with his/her paws whilst the other takes a photo. Or, let them take a self portrait:
Be careful though – cats have a habit of dipping their paws in everything.
Hopefully that tutorial would have been useful for you – do let me know what you think in the comments 
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for making me laugh! xD
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Lolll… Loved the post + your lipstick. :p
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Your photog tips are just amazing LOL!
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lol this was hilarious.
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lol.
love this!!!!
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Haha this was great! Thank you for the laugh and you look fabulous!
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I really LOL’d at the last picture. That was freaky. XD;
Awesome post for April Fool’s. *thumbs up*
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LOL! Great post!
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this was so funny lol.
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hehe brilliant.
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That was great. That cat picture was kinda freaky, though, hehe.
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Thank you for the good laugh. xD
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This post was hilarious
Thank you for such a great, entertaining post 
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Thanks for the tips! They’re very inspiring ;D
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absolutely hilarious…I cannot understand the duckface picture I see online, but I loved your comments of “We remove any trace of happiness or joy from our face”…Without ducking around, I seem not to qualify for the true beauty blogger profile, but that is all right anyway ;p
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now you’ve shown up those pretty face!!!hehehehe thanks a lot sweetie =)
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Oh god you take the crap out of beauty Looove it
Anne xxxx
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You nailed it!
Now my pictures will look absolutely professional and beauty-blogger- like XD
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i was thinking if you are just craze, rsrsrsrs
it’s really funny, i was searching for another think and don’t remember how i can stop here rsrsrss
congratulationns
rsrs
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