How to Stop Smiling Awkwardly in Pictures
They tell me that I have an amazing smile when there are no cameras around, but as soon as someone points the lens in my direction, I turn into a robot that cannot sincerely smile. I look like I am being held hostage and forced to send home a false signal of consolation with a ransom note. This is the “this is okay” meme, embodied by the man’s timid smile, but it doesn’t have to be that way for me (or for you).
If you’re like me and look like an awkward schoolboy on photo day, don’t despair: you can work on making your smile more natural in a few simple steps.
How to improve your smile in front of the camera
It may seem like overkill to exercise on your face to improve your smile, but there are 42 muscles on the face , giving it one of the most diverse muscle groups in the human body. Some people offer questionable beauty advice that the face can be trained for a variety of purposes, including reversing the aging process (although there is little rigorous scientific evidence to support this).
However, there is a way to teach your face to smile more naturally. The most common way to do this is to smile as wide as possible at intervals of ten seconds, and then wrinkle your lips. The idea is to give you more control over your facial muscles so you know what you are doing when the camera is pointed at you.
One of the ways to do this is offered by Ozarko dentistry :
You should smile as wide as possible with open lips, hold the pose for at least 15 seconds and repeat 10 times. You will know that you are smiling wide enough if you feel a slight tension in your cheeks. If you don’t feel anything, try smiling a little wider. If you continue this exercise for several days, you will quickly notice an improvement in how wide you can smile.
Another one that Ozarko Dentistry stands for is called “Rabbit”, but you don’t have to call him that name publicly. As always, do these things in front of the mirror:
Start with the widest smile possible without opening your mouth. It can help visualize your smile from ear to ear. While smiling, try wiggling your nose until you feel the tension in your cheek muscles. Hold the pose for about five seconds and repeat 10 times.
While it doesn’t rank high in mainstream science, a 2014 article published in the Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research did tout the benefits of doing facial exercises to improve your smile. If anything, it teaches you to have more control when you are actually asked to smile, instead of trying to animate a real grin.
How to make yourself smile
The trick of smiling, as anyone with real human emotions can attest, is to think about something that makes you happy. However, sometimes this does not work, as creating images of your beloved dog can make a dummy smile (especially if you are me).
The art of modern dentistry recommends a trick that photographers often use:
One trick is to create an unnaturally grumpy face first. Many photographers use this trick on their clients to get natural smiles. When they tell their clients to put on a grumpy / serious face and hold on to it, clients can’t resist eventually returning to their natural smile.
You can try other psychological tricks as well. For starters, you can imagine someone you like or make you laugh behind the camera. If I were to introduce Danny DeVito or someone else who amuses me off camera, my smile probably wouldn’t be so awkward. These psychological components, combined with the ability to control facial movements, can help you smile a little better on command.