How to do it, step by step
- Choose the height before the spot Eye level for a head and shoulders frame, hip height for full length. A camera at chest height pointing down shortens the body, which is the most common fault in self-portraits.
- Prop the phone and weight it Books, a mug, a shoe, a railing or a small tripod. Put something heavy behind it and tilt the top back a few degrees so it is not pointing at the floor.
- Put a stand-in where you will stand A bag, a coat over a chair, a cushion. This is what the camera will focus and meter on, and without it the phone sets both for the far wall.
- Lock focus and exposure on the stand-in Tap and hold until the lock indicator appears, then drag to set the brightness on the stand-in rather than the room. Every frame in the set will now match.
- Mark the spot and shoot a test frame Leave a coin or a cap on the floor so you return to the same place. Check the test frame for level horizon, generous margins and anything growing out of your head.
- Fire in bursts with a remote, and keep moving Hold the trigger down for ten frames at a time rather than taking single shots, and move between frames. Then cull hard, because forty frames only helps if you discard most of them.
Ways to fire the shutter from across the room
| Trigger | What it needs | Range | Frames per trigger | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| On-screen timer | Nothing | However fast you run | One, or a short burst on some phones | One trigger per sprint, so ten frames means ten sprints |
| Bluetooth clicker | A small remote, the cheapest useful camera accessory there is | Several metres | As many as you like, including bursts | It is in your hand, so hide it or accept it in shot |
| Headset volume button | Any wired or Bluetooth headphones | Cable length, or Bluetooth range | Unlimited | A cable may be visible, and earbuds may be |
| Earbud press | Recent AirPods on iOS 26 or later, in Apple's Camera app | Normal Bluetooth range | A burst per press | Apple's own Camera app only, and it is off by default |
| Palm gesture | Built into many Android cameras, and some third-party apps | Whatever the lens can see | Usually a countdown then a frame | The raised hand is in frame until the countdown starts |
The iPhone-specific mechanics, including which AirPods do what and how to set up Voice Control properly, are on the hands-free shutter guide. If you only take one thing from this table, it is that a small Bluetooth clicker removes the entire problem for the price of a coffee.
Where to put the phone with no tripod
Two things decide where the phone goes: height and stability. Height first, because it is the one people get wrong. For a head and shoulders frame the lens wants to be at your eye level. For a full-length shot it wants to be at hip height, about a metre off the ground, because a camera up at chest height pointing down foreshortens the body and shortens the legs.
Household stands that work, roughly in order of how stable they are:
- A stack of books on a table or the floor, phone leaning back against another book. Adjustable to the centimetre.
- A mug or a glass, phone slipped inside and leaning back against the rim. Surprisingly steady and the right height on a table.
- A shoe, phone wedged into the opening. The classic floor-level solution for full-length shots.
- A windowsill, phone leaning against the glass, which also puts you in the best light in the room.
Two rules for all of them. Put something heavy behind the phone, because a phone standing on its edge will eventually fall and a phone that falls lens-down is expensive. And tilt the top backwards a few degrees: a phone leaning even slightly forward points at the floor and crops your head off.
The part that actually goes wrong
Here is the failure nobody warns you about. You set the frame with nobody in it, so the camera focuses on the far wall and meters for the far wall. Then you walk in, closer than the focus point and usually darker or brighter than the background, and the phone either refocuses on something unhelpful or does not refocus at all.
The fix takes ten seconds. Put a stand-in where you will stand: a bag, a coat over a chair, a cushion, a bin. Tap it on screen and hold until the exposure and focus lock indicator appears. Drag up or down to set the brightness on the stand-in rather than on the room. Then take the stand-in away and shoot.
Locking has a second benefit that matters more than the focus: every frame in the set now has identical exposure and colour, so the whole batch looks like one shoot rather than eight photos with slightly different brightness.
Two supporting habits. Stand well clear of the background, two or three metres if the room allows, which gives the lens depth of field to spare and makes small focus errors invisible. And do not shoot straight into a bright window, because a locked exposure on a backlit subject either silhouettes you or blows the window out, and with nobody behind the camera nobody notices until later.
Framing a shot you cannot see
Mark the spot. Put something on the floor where your feet will go before the stand-in comes away: a coin, a cap, a leaf. Without a mark you drift half a metre across three attempts and the framing changes with you.
Shoot one test frame with the stand-in in place and look at it properly. You are checking three things: is the mark far enough from the edges, is the horizon level, and is there anything behind the spot that will appear to grow out of your head.
Frame looser than you think. Everybody stands further to one side and lower in the frame than they expect, and a crop afterwards costs nothing while a cropped-off elbow cannot be recovered. Turn the grid on, because a level horizon is most of what separates a considered photo from a snapshot.
If you have a watch or a second phone, use it as a live preview and the problem disappears. Without one, the loop is shoot, walk back, adjust, repeat. Two correction rounds is usually enough.
Shoot far more than feels reasonable
The single biggest difference between somebody who takes good photos of themselves and somebody who does not is the number of frames. A person holding the camera fires forty frames without thinking about it. Alone, most people take three and wonder why none of them work.
Burst. Hold the shutter or the volume button down and the phone fires roughly ten frames a second. With a remote in your hand you can do this from across the room as many times as you like. Move continuously through the burst rather than holding a pose, because held poses stiffen within about two seconds.
Video, then grab frames. Record a few seconds of 4K video, walk through the scene, then pull stills out of it afterwards. A 4K frame is about 8 megapixels, which is plenty for a phone screen or a social post. Be aware of the trade: a video frame does not go through the stills processing pipeline, so it is noticeably noisier in low light and less sharp than a real photo. In good light it is an excellent trick, and indoors at night it is not.
Then cull hard. Forty frames is a gift only if you throw away thirty-eight. Go through once quickly and keep anything with open eyes and no motion blur, then go through the survivors slowly.
Ours, so discount it: ShutterAI has a palm-gesture shutter called Wave to Shoot, so the trigger is your hand rather than an accessory you have to hold. It is not available yet. It lands on iPhone this fall, free to start, and there is a waitlist.
The small amount of kit worth owning
Three things, and you will use the first two forever.
A Bluetooth clicker. The cheapest accessory in photography and the one that changes the most. It pairs as a keyboard, it fires the shutter in any camera app that responds to the volume button, and it fits in a coat pocket. Hide it in a palm, behind a bag, or in a pocket with your hand resting on it.
A small tripod with a phone clamp. The tabletop kind with bendable legs. The legs wrap around railings, branches and chair backs, which solves the height problem in places where there is no flat surface at the right level. Check that the clamp holds your phone with its case on.
A clamp or a suction mount if you shoot outdoors a lot. Gripping a fence rail or a signpost gets the lens to hip height anywhere, which is the height full-length shots need and the height nothing in a normal street provides.
What you do not need: a ring light, which produces flat frontal light and a distinctive circular catchlight that makes a photo look like it was taken for an app; and a selfie stick, which extends your reach by a few tens of centimetres when the actual requirement is two metres.
Questions people ask
How do you take photos alone?
Prop the phone at the right height, put a stand-in object where you will stand and lock focus and exposure on it, mark the spot on the floor, then fire in bursts with a remote, an earbud or a voice command rather than running back for a ten second timer.
How do I take full body photos of myself?
Get the lens down to hip height, about a metre off the ground, and three to four metres back at 1x. A phone propped in a shoe or clamped to a railing does this. A camera at chest height pointing down foreshortens the body and shortens the legs.
Why is my self-timer photo out of focus?
Because the camera focused on the background while the frame was empty and did not refocus when you walked in. Put a bag or a coat where you will stand, tap and hold to lock focus and exposure on it, then remove it before you shoot.
What is the best remote shutter for phone photos?
A small Bluetooth clicker. It pairs as a keyboard, works in almost any camera app, costs very little and fires unlimited frames including bursts. Wired or Bluetooth headphones do the same job with their volume button if you already own a pair.
Can I use video instead of photos to take pictures of myself?
Yes, with one caveat. Record 4K, move through the scene and pull stills out afterwards; a 4K frame is about 8 megapixels, which is plenty for a screen. Video frames skip the stills processing, so they are noisier and softer in low light than a real photo would be.