How to take pictures of yourself (alone, no tripod)

To take pictures of yourself, prop your phone upright at about hip height, 7–10 ft (2–3 m) away, frame the empty spot where you’ll stand, and lock focus on it. Then use the 10-second timer or a remote shutter, such as AirPods, an Apple Watch or a Bluetooth clicker, and take far more frames than you think you need. You don’t need a tripod or a friend.

The rest of this guide is the detail: where to prop the phone, how to frame a spot you’re not standing in yet, and which shutter method suits which shot.

What you need

• Your phone, on the back camera. It has the best quality and the 0.5x and zoom lenses.
• Something to lean it on. See the list below; a tripod is optional.
• A way to fire the shutter from a distance. The built-in timer works. A remote is faster.

Step 1: Choose the spot for the light, not the view

Stand so the light is in front of you or off to one side: a big window, or a low sun at an angle. With the light directly behind you, your face goes dark unless you want a silhouette. Outdoors, open shade (the shadow of a building, with open sky above it) gives soft, even light at almost any time of day.

Then step 3–6 ft (1–2 m) out from the wall or whatever is behind you. You stand out from the background, and it softens a little.

Step 2: Prop the phone at hip height

Hip height is the target for full-length photos because it’s the middle of your body. From there the phone sees you straight on and your proportions stay natural. Higher, and your legs get shorter; much lower, and the photo becomes a deliberate low-angle shot.

Everyday things that get the phone to the right height:

Prop	Rough lens height	Good for
Cafe or dining table	Just under hip height	Full length, standing
Bench or chair seat with a bag or books on it	Knee to hip height	Full length, sitting poses
Low wall, ledge, planter, fence post	Varies; pick one near your hips	Full length, outdoors
Steps	Pick the step level with your hips	Full length on stairs
Floor or ground	A few inches	Deliberately low, long-legged shots on 0.5x
Shelf or windowsill at chest height	Chest height	Waist-up and portraits

To keep the phone upright, stand it on its short edge and lean it against a water bottle, a mug, a shoe or a book. The more upright the better: a phone leaning back points at the sky, crops your feet and tips straight lines inward.

Check it on screen. Turn on Grid and Level in Settings > Camera. The level helps with side-to-side tilt; for the backward lean, look at a door frame, a lamppost or a building edge and make sure it runs parallel to the grid lines.

Don’t leave the phone on a ledge above a drop, or anywhere wind or a passer-by can knock it. Keep it where you can see it, and keep your bag on you.

Step 3: Frame the empty spot before you step in

This is the step people skip, and it’s why so many self-timer photos lose the feet or leave a head jammed against the top of the frame.

1. Mark your spot. Put your bag, a shoe or a stone exactly where your feet will go.
2. Frame for a person who isn’t there yet. Back at the phone, put the marker a little above the bottom edge and leave plenty of room above where your head will be. Use the scene to judge your height: a standard US door is about 6 ft 8 in (2 m) tall, so if a door next to your spot fits in the frame, you will too.
3. Lock focus on the marker. Touch and hold the marker on screen until AE/AF Lock appears. Focus and exposure stay put, so the camera doesn’t refocus on the background when you walk in. Tap the screen to unlock it later.
4. Stay on 1x unless the space is too tight. Then switch to 0.5x and plan to stand in the middle of the frame.

This is also where an overlay camera earns its place. In Onpose, the pose you’ve picked, from its library or any photo you’ve saved, sits semi-transparent over the live camera, so while you’re still behind the phone you can see where a person in that pose lands in your frame: how big, where the feet fall, how much room there is above the head. Move the phone until the ghost is standing where you’re going to stand, then use the hands-free timer to walk into place and burst to keep shooting while you try angles.

Step 4: Timer, remote or burst

The built-in timer

On iPhone, using the Camera app:

1. Open Camera in Photo mode.
2. Open the camera controls. How you open them depends on your iOS version.
3. Tap Timer, then choose a delay, such as 3 or 10 seconds.
4. Tap the shutter button and walk into place.

Use 10 seconds for full-length shots so you can get to your mark and settle; 3 is enough when the phone is within arm’s reach. To turn the timer off, open the same tools and switch it off.

The catch: every new round means walking back to the phone to start it again. The exact timer and Burst steps for each iOS version are in how to take a photo with the timer on iPhone, and do you need a pose app? covers when the built-in Camera is all you need.

A remote shutter

A remote lets you take dozens of frames without leaving your spot, which changes how relaxed the photos look:

• AirPods. On supported models you can press the AirPod stem to take a photo.
• Apple Watch. The Camera Remote app fires the shutter from your wrist and shows you the camera’s view, so you can check your framing without walking back.
• A Bluetooth shutter clicker. Cheap, small, and pairs with the phone like headphones.

Burst and Live Photos

• Burst takes photos in rapid succession: swipe the shutter button to the left and hold, then lift your finger to stop. It needs a finger on the phone (or the volume-up button, if you turn on Use Volume Up for Burst in Settings > Camera), so it’s best when someone else is shooting or the phone is within reach.
• Live Photos record a moment either side of each shot. If you blinked, open the photo in Photos, tap the edit button, tap the Live Photo button, move the white frame to a better moment and tap Make Key Photo. Treat it as a rescue, not a plan: an in-between frame can look softer than the photo you actually took.

Step 5: Shoot in rounds

1. Plan three poses before you start. Poses for pictures alone has twelve to choose from, each with its phone height, lens and distance.
2. Move slowly through each pose during the round: shift your weight, turn your head, look away and back. Movement looks more natural than a held pose.
3. Check after every round. Walk back, zoom into the last frames and look for one thing at a time: feet in frame, eyes open, hands relaxed. Fix it and go again.

If you want the posing side in more depth, the guide to posing for pictures covers body angles, hands and light, each with its camera setup.

Setups for the places you’ll actually shoot

At home

Shoot near your biggest window, facing it or with it beside the phone. Clear the floor and the wall behind you. A chair seat with two or three books on it gets the lens close to hip height. In a small room the 1x lens may not fit your full height; switch to 0.5x, stand in the middle of the frame and keep the phone upright so door frames stay straight. For a birthday shoot at home, from the candlelit portrait to the cake held at chest height, see birthday photo ideas.

On a solo trip

Cafe tables, benches, low walls and steps are everywhere once you start looking. Mornings are quieter. Decide the framing first, then get into position quickly: the less time the phone sits on its own, the better. For poses that keep the place in the picture, like railings, doorways and looking back over your shoulder, see the travel poses, and for packing, propping the phone in a new place and asking strangers, how to take pictures on a solo trip.

If you’d rather ask someone, set the shot up yourself first and hand them the phone with the framing ready: “Hold it at my hip height, keep my feet in, and take lots.” The full script is in how to teach someone to take good pictures of you.

For a profile photo

Profiles on Instagram and dating apps work best with a clear face-forward shot as well as a full-length one. For head and shoulders, put the phone at eye level on a shelf or a stack of books, use the first zoom step above 1x (2x or more, depending on your iPhone), and stand about 3–5 ft (1–1.5 m) away, facing a window. To find which side of your face to show, see how to find your best angle.

Front camera or back camera?

The back camera has the higher-resolution main sensor and all the lenses, so use it for the photos you want to keep. The front camera lets you watch yourself while you pose, which is useful for working a pose out, but it’s lower resolution and can’t use the back camera’s lenses.

A good pattern: work out the pose on the front camera, then switch to the back camera for the real round. Unless Mirror Front Camera is on, iPhone saves front-camera photos flipped compared with the preview. To keep them exactly as you saw them, go to Settings > Camera and turn on Mirror Front Camera.