How to Get Natural Smiles in Family Photos (Without Saying Cheese)

The word "cheese" is the enemy of natural smiles. The forced grin it produces — wide, held, slightly anxious — is the look that makes people say "I hate photos of myself." Natural smiles come from something genuinely funny or joyful happening, or from focused engagement with something other than the camera. This guide explains what creates them and what doesn't.

Why "smile for the camera" rarely works

When people try to smile for a camera, the muscles involved are voluntary — they produce a Duchenne smile (which involves the eye muscles as well as the mouth) only when the smile is genuine. A commanded smile uses only the zygomatic major muscles (the mouth corners), producing the tight, performance smile that looks unmistakably posed in photographs.

The difference is in the eyes. Genuine smiles crinkle the outer eye corners. Posed smiles don't. The camera sees this distinction instantly, and so do viewers. The solution is not to try harder to smile correctly — it's to stop trying to smile and instead respond to something genuinely enjoyable.

What actually creates natural smiles

• ◆Genuine laughter: The most reliable trigger. A good photographer has techniques for this: telling a genuinely funny joke, catching families in absurd situations, asking children to make a ridiculous face (and then photographing the giggling that follows). When people laugh, their faces completely open.
• ◆Distraction from the camera: People smile naturally when they forget they're being photographed. Focusing on children, on games, on each other — all of these take attention away from the lens and allow natural expression to emerge.
• ◆Real activities: Walking together, playing a game, children racing to a tree, everyone jumping at the same time — actions create engagement, engagement creates natural expression, natural expression creates the images you wanted.
• ◆Comfortable warm-up time: The first 10–15 minutes of any portrait session are rarely the best images. People need time to settle, stop performing, and become comfortable with the camera's presence. There's no shortcut — the natural smiles come after the warm-up period, not during it.
• ◆Talking to each other, not the camera: Family members telling each other something — a joke, a memory, a question — while the photographer works around them produces relational images that feel completely genuine. The best images sometimes happen when nobody is looking at the lens at all.

Specific techniques by age

What to do if you dislike photos of yourself

Most people who say they hate photos of themselves are evaluating photos taken when they were performing for the camera — and performing, in that context, produces the strained result that confirms their belief. The solution is a photographer whose working style doesn't require performance.

Look at a photographer's portfolio for images where the subjects are clearly not looking at the camera, or are clearly laughing at something other than instruction. These are the samples of their documentary approach — and documentary approach is what produces natural results.

Frequently asked questions