You do not need a second person. What you need is a plain wall, daylight from the front, and the phone held at eye level about an arm and a half away. Everything else — the background, the crop, the exact size — is done for you after you upload.
Stand in the right place
Put your back about a metre away from a plain, light-coloured wall. That gap is what keeps your own shadow off the wall behind you, and a shadow behind the head is the single most common reason a photo comes back.
Face a window, so the daylight falls on your face rather than behind you. Never stand with the window behind you: the camera will expose for the bright background and leave your face dark.
Use the timer, not your arm
Holding the phone in your hand tilts your head and distorts your features — the lens is too close and the nose comes out larger than it is. Instead:
- Prop the phone against a stack of books, a mug or a shelf, at the height of your own eyes.
- Use the rear camera: it is sharper than the front one on almost every phone.
- Set the self-timer to five or ten seconds and step back until your head and the top of your shoulders fill the frame.
- Take three or four, then pick the best.
Keep a neutral expression with your mouth closed, both eyes open, and your head straight — no tilt, no turn.
Check it before you upload
Look at the photo at full size and ask three questions: is the face in focus, is the lighting even across both cheeks, and is there anything behind you other than the wall? If the answer is yes, yes and no, upload it.
Turn portrait mode off. The artificial blur around the hair is treated as a manipulated image, and it is one of the few problems we cannot repair for you.
Our tool checks all of this automatically and tells you exactly what to fix before you pay, so a bad attempt costs you nothing but a minute.