Tips to Take a Great Selfie

From Body Language Expert Patti Wood

Make sure you look at tips one and eight as they are key!

1. Tip One - Don’t hold your breath, instead take deep breaths filling up your stomach, not your upper chest with air. Breathe again relaxing your shoulders and then let the breath fill you up and lift up your body. Don’t worry you will be moving as the photo is taken. Just keep snapping letting your deep full breaths lift you to create wonderful "up" body language. 
2. Tip Two - If you are standing and want to look "extra" skinny across the waist and hips stand like female celebs do on the red carpet. Place one foot pivoted out to the right and the other foot in front of it with toes pointed slightly to the left.
3. Tip Three - To look skinny you can turn so one shoulder is towards the camera and the other is away from it. This works for women and for men. You have heard that TV adds ten pounds to anyone filmed. When a photo of you is taken head on, it makes you look heavier than you are. It’s because the plane of the body in the photo matches the plane of the camera’s eye not because you ate too much chocolate. Remember when one shoulder is closer to the camera then the other it makes you look slimmer.
4. Tip Four - For women only. If you’re standing and you want to take attention away from your hips and look slimmer, stand with only one side of your body towards the camera with your feet and the rest of your body turned away. Then turn and look at the camera over your shoulder.
5. Tip Five- To look slimmer and powerful.
   For women: To give yourself an hourglass figure do the Mae West, "Come up to my place." Hand on your hip stance.  Stand catty corner from the camera so your right foot is towards the camera at 12:00 on a clock and your left foot is to the side at nine o’clock slightly behind the right. Shift your weight over your back left leg. Stretch your body up to elongate your torso and place your hand just above your hip. This pose doesn't work for everyone so check yourself out in the mirror first.
   For men: Expand your body by lifting up your chest and holding your shoulders back. Practice in a mirror first so you can make sure you look natural and relaxed and don't forget the breathing in tip #one to make it natural. 
6. Tip Six- Stretch your neck up and point your chin just a little bit up. This gets rid of a double chin. Careful not to point it too high up or you will look like a stuck up snob.
7. Tip Seven – A variation from the above. Turn your head so that only ¾’s of your face is towards the camera and then lift up and elongate your neck then slightly tilt your head to the side. This keeps any sagging skin at the neck, chin and face smoothed out. Think of it as a temporary face-lift. Now if you could only stay that way all the time and not look like a goose!
8. Tip Eight – Smile naturally. Talk while you are being photographed. Don’t freeze. Freezing into cheese pose makes the muscles in your face tighten rather than relax. Keep snapping. Talk about things that make you happy, your kids, or your sweetie. The magic words that will help your face go into a full big smile are words that end with your mouth open such as ee and aa sounds so you can say a string of words like money, cherry, cheese, hay, day, lay, say.  
9. Tip Nine -Another trick for smiling is to place the tip of your tongue behind your upper front teeth and smile. Or turn on a comedy show and start laughing. Everybody looks beautiful when laughing.
10. Tip Ten - Show the best side of your face. This is different for each individual. The right side of your face is controlled by the left hemisphere and is less emotional. That may mean it has less wrinkles or it may make you look more severe.  Your left side of your face is controlled by the right emotional hemisphere which tends to make that side of your face more animated and expressive. Check out your face in the mirror to find your "best side."
11. Tip Eleven – Sometimes you can break all the rules, lean in, look down and say "hello"