The ten-minute checklist for a source photo

The quality of a composite starts long before I open the file. A good source photo saves time, keeps your features faithful and lets me relight you convincingly. Here is what to do, roughly in the order you will do it.

1. Find a window. Stand a metre or two from a large window in daytime, with the light coming from the side. Soft daylight from one direction is the most useful thing you can give me.
2. Avoid direct sun and flash. Harsh sun creates hard shadows on your face, and flash flattens it. Overcast daylight is excellent.
3. Choose a plain background. A bare wall or door is ideal. Busy patterns around your hair and hands make clean cutting harder.
4. Hold the camera at chest height. Not looking up from below and not down from above. Keep the phone straight, not tilted.
5. Show what you want in the picture. If you want full length, include your feet with a little space around them. If you want a portrait, frame from the waist up.
6. Wear fitting clothes in colours that contrast with the wall. Think about the destination too: a bulky winter coat suits Lofoten but not the Sahara.
7. Keep hands and hair visible. Hair blowing over the face or hands in pockets make edges harder to reproduce.
8. Turn off filters and portrait mode. Beauty filters change your features and artificial background blur damages the edges I need.
9. Send the original file. Attach the photo to an email rather than sending a screenshot or a messaging-app copy, which are compressed and lose detail.
10. Add a short note. Tell me the place, the time of day and what the image is for. It lets me match the light before I start.

A few extra tips

Take three or four shots with slightly different expressions and angles, and pick the one where you look most like yourself. If more than one person will appear, photograph each person separately in the same light; it is much easier to combine them convincingly than to cut them from a group shot.

Think about the destination when you choose the direction of light. Facing a window on your left is a natural match for a scene where the sun is low on the left. It is not essential, since I can relight you either way, but it means less has to be invented. The article on light explains why I care about this so much.

When you are ready, email the photo to ecole@lensvoyage.tech or use the consultation request. Your photos are used only for your project and never published without your permission; details are in the privacy policy.