Digitals — still called polaroids long after the film stopped being involved — are plain photographs showing what you actually look like. They are the first thing most agencies ask a new face for, and the thing beginners most reliably get wrong, because every instinct says make them look good and the entire point is that they should not.
A portfolio shows what a team can make of you. Digitals show what the team is starting with. Nobody experienced will trust the first without seeing the second.
A wall and a window is the entire studio.The kit
A phone from the last few years. A plain wall in white, cream or pale grey. A window. Somebody to press the button. That is genuinely all of it. A tripod and the self-timer will do if you are on your own, though a second person is faster and the framing comes out better.
The light
Face the window, daylight on your face, wall behind you. No flash. Never shoot with the window behind you unless a silhouette is what you want. Avoid hard midday sun coming through glass, which carves shadows under the eyes and ages everybody by a decade. An overcast day is close to perfect, and northern Europe supplies them generously.
Turn off every beauty setting your phone has, including the ones switched on by default that nobody told you about. Turn off portrait mode and background blur. Shoot in the standard mode at full resolution.
What to wear
Close-fitting, plain, unbranded. Commonly a fitted top with jeans, or a simple swimsuit if you are comfortable and the agency has asked. For men a plain fitted t-shirt and jeans, shirtless only if requested. Bare feet or simple heels for the full-length frames, and say which.
Nothing baggy, nothing patterned, no logos. The clothes exist to show your shape, not to be looked at.
Hair and face
Hair down, brushed, natural, and off the face for at least one set. No heat styling into something you never actually wear. No makeup, or the barest minimum if there is a skin condition you would rather not put on display — though bear in mind that skin gets retouched at the professional stage and nobody is startled by a human face.
Jewellery off. Sunglasses off. If you wear glasses daily, one frame with and the rest without.
The nine frames
- Head and shoulders, straight to camera, neutral.
- Head and shoulders, straight to camera, a real smile with teeth.
- Head and shoulders, left profile.
- Head and shoulders, right profile.
- Full length, front, arms relaxed at your sides.
- Full length, side.
- Full length, back.
- Three-quarter length, front, hands out of pockets.
- Hands, if parts or fit work interests you.
Shoot vertically. Keep the camera at chest height for full length and eye height for the head shots. Shooting up at somebody from waist level distorts proportion and is the single most common framing error in a beginner set.
Nine frames, no styling, no filter.How to stand
Do not pose. Stand the way you stand. Weight even, shoulders down, arms hanging, chin level. The neutral expression should be genuinely neutral — not stern, not pouting, not holding half a smile. Look into the lens rather than at the screen.
It will feel wrong, and it is supposed to. Somebody is trying to read your proportions and your face, and a pose gets in the way of both.
What quietly ruins a set
- Filters, skin smoothing, any beauty mode. Spotted instantly, and they cast doubt on everything else in the card.
- Cropping the feet off a full-length shot.
- Cluttered backgrounds: a bed, a radiator, a drying rack, a mirror with the photographer in it.
- Overhead ceiling light instead of daylight.
- Photographs older than a few months, or from before a change of hair or shape.
- Screenshots of photographs, which lose resolution twice over.
Refresh them
Every three or four months, and immediately after any change of hair colour, cut or noticeable change in shape. A set that no longer matches the person arriving at the fitting is worse than having none.
Where they live on your card
On CastHub your photographs, name, roles and city are the public part of your profile. Measurements, sizes, contact details and the rest of your professional material only open to company accounts that have passed identity verification. If you keep a locked album, the request runs one way and one way only: a verified company can ask, you decide, and you can take the access back afterwards. No amount of browsing opens it.
Good digitals take about forty minutes and cost nothing. For an unrepresented model they are the highest-return thing available in a single afternoon.
