Tips on How to Smile with Your Eyes for a Photo

Smiling

Smiling has mostly been associated with the lips, and over the years, people have started to see it as an art. A smile has been known to bridge the gap between two individuals, break the ice in awkward situations, and ease anger in warring factions. Some go to great lengths of achieving teeth perfection because they believe that a nice smile entails a nice set of teeth. While it is easy to fake smiles of the lips, an observant eye can immediately sense whether a smile is genuine or not even just by looking at a smiling face framed in a photograph, simply by looking at the eyes. Due to this fact, it has been a photographer’s constant clamor to get his or her subject to smile with the eyes.

How to Smile with Your Eyes

While the art of smiling may be perfected through practice, nothing could ever replace a sincere and genuine smile – the kind that reaches the eyes. Researchers have termed this type of smile as the Duchenne smile. It can be said that genuine happiness produce genuine smiles so one may find it extremely important to find out what makes you happy to help you achieve the kind of happiness that comes from within. Think of happy thoughts as you face the mirror and see how it does wonders to your eyes. Free your mind from thoughts of worry, fear, anger and anxiety and simply fill your heart with thoughts of being happy.

Practice smiling with your eyes using these helpful tips: Lift your eyebrows, raise your cheekbones up a bit and squint the corners of your eyes. Do all these while at the same time pushing your shoulders down. Remember to relax your mouth during the exercise. It would actually help to practice in front of the mirror days before you have your photo taken. Do not get frustrated when you don’t see the results right away since it usually takes a lot of practice before one achieves that certain ‘twinkle’ in the eyes.

You can practice your smile in front of the mirror or you may perform a trial-and-error picture taking of yourself using your digital camera. Take a picture of yourself in different angles with your smiling eyes. Preview all your shots and pick the one you like best. Keep taking photos of yourself until you master that look. Also try different smiles either with your teeth visible or not and see how your eyes would look like. For a much interesting photo, smile with your eyes only and do experiments with your look by pouting, opening your mouth, showing your tongue and the like. This way, you would know how you will respond to a picture taking in portrait mode, candid, glamour and formal shots.

For better digital photography results, you may also want to read more and learn how to take great self portraits with these photography tips.

Make-up Tips for Ladies

For ladies, smiling with the eyes can be achieved with the help of make-up. Keep in mind that it is always best not to put a lot of dark makeup around the eyes since this would only give out a rather fierce look, which doesn’t go well with a twinkling eye. Another tip is to wear your eyeliner only on the upper lids because this tends to open up the eyes as opposed to applying it on the lower lids which will only make your eyes appear smaller. Use an eyelash curler to further achieve that ‘open eyes’ look and put on mascara as a final touch.