How to Pose With a Life-Size Standee — Tilt and Awkward Scale, Fixed

Pose with a life-size standee (a cardboard cutout) at a venue and it tilts, the scale between you two feels off, or the standee gets cut off. The causes: shooting from below, getting too close, and a missed level. Get level and sort out where you stand, and you’ll get a keepsake shot standing naturally beside your fave.

Level it with the grid

A standee’s vertical edges are straight, so tilt is very noticeable. Turn on the grid and line the standee’s vertical edge up with a vertical grid line (→ How to use grid lines). Shooting from below makes the standee lean backward, so frame it from straight in front, around the middle of its height where you can. If it came out tilted, see how to fix it (→ Fixing a tilted photo).

Place the standee and person via the rule of thirds

Split yourself and the standee to the left and right of the frame and stand along the rule-of-thirds lines, and the scale feels natural and settled (→ Rule of thirds). Get too close and your face looms while the standee distorts, so step back a little and shoot at 2–3× zoom to match your sizes. Bringing a venue decoration or gate into the foreground like a frame adds a “really there” feeling (→ Framing). When you want movement, a diagonal that uses slanted lines works too (→ Diagonal composition).

Composition guideRule of thirdsSee the full guide for this composition → Composition guideFramingSee the full guide for this composition → Composition guideDiagonal compositionSee the full guide for this composition →

Shoot it without camera shake

When shooting alone, set the phone on a stand and use the self-timer to avoid shake and lock in your composition (→ How to use the self-timer). When you want to be in the shot yourself, selfies and set-down two-shots have a guide of their own (→ Selfies with a life-size standee). When you ask someone, just telling them “grid on, keep the standee’s vertical straight” cuts down on misses. See how to shoot selfies and groups too (→ How to shoot selfies / How to shoot group photos).

Start with just this

Use the grid to keep the standee’s vertical straight, step back and match sizes with zoom, and split left and right via the rule of thirds. Alone, a stand plus the self-timer. That alone makes photos with a life-size standee come together naturally. For single goods, see How to photograph fan goods too.