Every so often, an article pops up with advice for the best photo posing angles, lighting tips, or filter adjustment levels. For the longest time, I had the instructions from this PopSugar post screencapped on my desktop. Sometimes celebrities and influencers sharing their secrets to taking good pictures. Over the weekend, noted hottie Elizabeth Hurley graced us with her trade secrets for taking a good bikini pic. According to Liz, the secret to taking good bikini pics is to avoid overhead light. The lighting during sunrise and sunset is your friend.
Elizabeth Hurley is spilling her secrets. The actress, 60, took to Instagram to reveal her top tips for nailing a bikini photo shoot. In a photo posted on Sunday, July 13, Hurley posed in front of a glass door wearing a tan string bikini with gold chain detailing. The star looks away from the camera, her hair falling behind her shoulders in a tousled style.
In the caption, she wrote, “The secret to flattering bikini pics? BAN overhead sunlight 🤣 When shooting bikinis, sunrise or sunset are your best friends 😉 ”
Hurley continued, “We shot this at 7am… By 8am, I was lounging around in one of my equally flattering @elizabethhurleybeach kaftans, feeling glamorous AND shielded from the lethal sun ♥️”
The bikini Hurley wears in the post is also from her beachwear line, Elizabeth Hurley Beach.
The actress has never shied away from sharing bikini snaps. Earlier this month, she posted a photo of herself in another Elizabeth Hurley Beach look consisting of a red bikini top and leopard-print bottoms in celebration of International Bikini Day, which took place on July 5.
“Every day of my life is bikini day … but somehow I missed posting for official International Bikini Day!!!” she wrote in the caption.
She continued, “Here’s a pic from my hol in Greece to make up for it 💋,” and also noted that she was wearing her Elizabeth Hurley Beach swimwear line.
Almost 20 years into this smart phone photography thing, I’m still embarrassingly amateurish. I’m great at taking food and landscape photos but all I know about selfies is to use an overhead angle. I’m sure Liz isn’t taking pictures with an iPhone here, but the technology is still good enough to apply the techniques she mentioned. I had no idea about the overhead sunlight thing, but I suppose it makes sense. I know that having back-lighting is bad, though! My solution for taking backlit pics has always been to just throw some sunglasses on! Actually, I think that sunglasses and being fully clothed have been my secret weapon for taking social media acceptable pictures all these years. I know a lot of people swear by the ring light for selfies and videos, but I’ve always felt like that washed me out. Judging from her red carpet and paparazzi pics, her other secret is to be hot.
Oh, that’s the problem. I thought it was my extra 15 pounds.
Well, she neglected to mention the copious amounts of airbrushing she did. So many blurry areas in her photos – her face, her thigh “gap,” between her arms and body, her chest, her arms and hands (except in the white dress photo taken by someone else). It’s pretty funny to me that she’s pretending her unlined face is due to no overhead lighting…
Overhead or not my boobs will be saggy even with a very good support bra so no bikini for me unless it’s a magic bikini that makes my boobs full and no sagging skin. One can dream or pay an exorbitant amount of money to have a full body lift lol.
The secret is looking like Liz Hurley lmao
I love when beautiful people give beauty advice 😭😭 Good lightening can definitely change the photo, but I struggle to believe that Elizabeth Hurley can get a bad pic.
She always had a hot body but a plain face. Botox and fillers made her the “ageless beauty” she is today. Not a single wrinkle with 60? Magically plump lips? LOL.
around 2006 I was in Cyprus for work and she was there doing a photoshoot on the beach. the paper published unofficial photos people took themselves next to the official photos and they were almost identical. I dont think changing the light is gonna give me that but thanks.
Yeah right. The lightning my a**. More like “lots of botox and fillers”. God, those celebrities and their shameless lies…
Lighting really matters in photography. More than anyone who isn’t a photographer thinks. Lighting matters more than the subject. A photo literally IS the lighting. Film or a CCD sensor is only ‘seeing’ the photons that bounce off of your subject.
Another thing that really matters is what lens is used. A camera lens is not a pair of eyes, and rarely works anything like a pair of eyes. The main thing is the fact that a camera image is not 3D but the images we see are…Because we have 2 eyes and our brain processes those two images as one 3D image. The other thing is the fact that most camera lenses have totally different focal lengths than human eyes. The types of lenses usually used for portrait or model work are nothing like our eyes. The last thing is that our eyes don’t actually “display” that much in focus at once. We think everything is in focus because our eyes are constantly making micro-movements. Camera lenses do not do this.
While it’s true that looking like Liz Hurley helps for glamour/beauty shots, you don’t actually have to be as good looking as she is to make it work. You do have to be (or have) a good photographer. Ever see models or movie stars IRL? They look kind of “off” when not seen through a professional’s lens. Some people even photograph really well and look much worse in person and vice versa.