How to relax in front of the camera (even if you think you never come out well in photos)
Not being photogenic is usually plain discomfort. A few proven ways to make the camera stop existing.
Lazar Mihajlović
Published: 28 July 2026
I am not photogenic, at least one of the two tells me at every other meeting. Always the same tone, half in jest, half in fear. And then at the wedding it is exactly that person who gets the frames that make them message me afterwards full of disbelief.
In ninety percent of cases, not being photogenic is plain discomfort showing on the face. And discomfort can be solved, fairly reliably at that. Here is how we do it together, from our first meeting to the moment you realise you have forgotten the camera completely.
Nobody knows how to pose, and that is fine
Stiff photographs do not happen because you do not know how to stand, but because you stand and wait. The moment a person stops still and smiles consciously into the lens, the body tenses and the smile turns into a grimace. It happens to people who are photographed every day. That is why I will never ask you to stand and look into the camera for five minutes.
There is no long standing still at my shoots. Even when we do the classic family line-up, the pace is lively, the instructions are short and nobody has time to start wondering how they look. It sounds like a small thing, and that is exactly where the difference between a stiff and a living frame is made.
Movement instead of a pose
A body in motion has no time to freeze. So instead of poses you get small tasks that look like a walk and do all the work:
- Walk holding hands, without looking at me
- Whisper something to each other that nobody else may hear
- Fix his tie, tuck a strand of her hair
- Look at each other, the lens does not exist
- Hug and stay like that for three long breaths
Matea and Dejan got half of their portraits during an ordinary walk, between two sentences about something else entirely. That is the whole secret: while you are busy with each other, the camera does its job. If any of these little things sounds silly, that is because it is. The laughter that happens right there is usually the best frame of the day.
A photographer who does not direct
My approach is simple: let people be themselves. I do not direct emotions, I do not interrupt a hug to correct it and I do not ask for the kiss to be repeated for the camera. I give direction, where the light is nicer and which way to go, and the rest is yours.
In practice it looks like this: while the two of you are agreeing about something completely ordinary, I move two steps because the light is better from there, and the frame is done before you noticed it was happening. You can read more about why I work exactly this way on the about page.
Guests at a wedding usually need an hour to stop noticing me. You need considerably less, because by then we will already know each other.
A pre-wedding session as a warm-up
Couples who are genuinely afraid of the camera are helped most by a pre-wedding session. An hour of walking without wedding nerves, in ordinary clothes, at a location you love. The first twenty minutes are awkward for everyone, and that is normal. Then the camera gets boring, so you forget it. At the wedding we are then not getting to know each other, we are carrying on where we left off.
Those sessions have a side effect too: you see how you look when you are not trying, and you realise that it is quite enough.
The best photographs happen in the second when you forget that I am there.
On the day itself
Have breakfast, wear shoes you have broken in and do not look at me, look at the people you love. The nerves usually last until the first song and the first laugh, after that the day carries you. Your job is not to look good in photographs. Your job is to live the day, and mine is to keep it.
And one more thing: do not practise poses in front of the mirror the night before the wedding. It does not help, and it adds pressure. You already know everything you need, how you hold hands and how you laugh with each other.
Lazar Mihajlović Photography
Think you are just not made for photographs?
Then we should meet. Coffee first, no camera. Half the nerves are gone before we take a single frame.
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