Every day, many people struggle to look more attractive in photos. The good news is that it may be easier than everyone thinks.
Different, but different from what?
As a photographer, I believe my work can be seen as a meditation on what makes people attractive.
In fact, the mission of Foto Bernal Vienna can be summed up as follows: to highlight the attractiveness of everyone who stands in front of my camera.
When is a person attractive? When they are different.
Different from what? I will try to explain the solution I have found to this problem.
Naturally, everything that follows is my opinion. Applicable to men, yes, but also applicable to women or anyone else, regardless of their gender identity.
Three tips for being attractive, in photos and in life
How do I try to make all the men who stand in front of my camera attractive?
Before I begin, I must say that it has also been a learning process for me.
As a photographer, in addition to learning how to use cameras and flashes, I have also had to “unlearn” several things that made my photos less expressive.
First, I believe that one way to look attractive in photos is, paradoxically, not to try to be attractive.
I think there is nothing less interesting than professionally beautiful people. In fact, there is a mantra that is engraved in my mind and that I always keep in mind when I pick up my camera: prettiness is the enemy of beauty.
Fashions change and people get tired of seeing the same faces that, through repetition, soon become masks. That’s why I always choose my models from among men who are not professional models whenever I can.
Secondly, everyone is attractive in some way; there is not such thing as not photogenic people. So, in each case, I focus on finding out what makes the person in front of me different. And generally, that unique way of being attractive has less to do with the body than with attitude. Especially with the gaze.
A pretty face is a pretty face. On the other hand, eyes that are truly the mirror of the soul are pure gold for a photographer.
People mistakenly think that “it” is something you either have or don’t have, that you are born attractive, but that’s not true.
Experience tells us that it is, above all, a question of attitude. Attractive people don’t try hard because they “know” they are attractive and just go with the flow. And that is completely independent of physical features.
What’s more, if you look at photos of people from other eras who were considered seductive by their contemporaries, you realize that most of them were not beautiful in the conventional sense. Not even by the standards of their time.
Third: yes, it’s true that I photograph beautiful bodies. I think that a healthy, well-trained body is beautiful in itself and has been and will continue to be a favorite motif in art history, but I’m not a fan of nudity as a motif.
I think it is very difficult to do well, among other things because, in general, a naked body alone is not very interesting. After all, what new thing can you say with a nude that has not already been said?
Furthermore, a naked body always works against the photographer because it eliminates a whole range of expressive resources that help me to single out a person from the crowd and give them individuality. A naked body is timeless, outside its social class, incapable of providing information about the person that I am interested in conveying. A completely naked body may be more or less beautiful, more or less harmonious, but it is mute.
