How to take a body progress photo you can actually compare
A progress photo is only useful if the next one is taken the same way. Where to put the phone, how far away, which lens, what to wear, what light, what time of day, and how to stand, so the change you see is your body and not the setup.
Updated 1 November 2026 · 5 min read
Why setup matters more than the camera
The point of a progress photo is to compare it with the next one. If the light, the distance, the angle, your clothes or the time of day change between the two, the photos will look different even when your body has not — and you will read the difference as progress, or as the lack of it.
Every phone made in the last several years has a good enough camera. What makes a progress photo useful is that it is repeatable. Everything below is about removing the things that change between photos so the only thing left to change is you.
Where to put the phone
Height: chest or waist level
Set the phone at roughly chest or waist height, with the lens pointing straight at you, not tilted up or down. This keeps your upper and lower body in proportion.
The common mistake is propping the phone on the floor against a wall. From down there the lens shoots upwards, so the legs and hips are closest to it and look larger, while the shoulders and head look smaller and further away. The reverse happens if you hold it high above your head. Either way, the outline in the photo is not the outline other people see.
Distance: 2–3 metres
Stand 2–3 metres from the phone. At that distance the whole body fits in the frame on the normal lens with a little space above your head and below your feet.
Closer than that and perspective distortion kicks in: whatever is nearest the lens looks bigger than it is. Research on faces measured this effect clearly — at selfie distance, the nose looks around 30% wider than from 1.5 metres — and the same physics applies to a body. If your midsection is closest to a phone a metre away, it will look larger than it is.
Lens: always 1x, never 0.5x
Most phones have a 0.5x ultra-wide lens. It fits more in from close up, which is why it is tempting in a small room. Do not use it. Wide lenses stretch the edges of the frame and bend straight lines, so arms, shoulders and legs near the edges look longer or wider. Use the standard 1x lens and step back instead. If the room is too small for 2 metres on 1x, use the longest distance you can and keep it the same every time.
Use a timer or a friend
Use the camera's 3- or 10-second timer, or ask someone to press the button. A burst mode is useful: take several and pick the one where you are standing most naturally.
If a friend takes it, ask them to stand where the phone would be, hold it at your chest height and keep it level. Do not let them crouch or hold it above their head.
Two photos: front and side
- Front. Face the camera, feet about hip-width apart, arms relaxed at your sides with a small gap between arms and body so the waist outline is visible.
- Side. Turn 90 degrees, so your shoulder points at the camera. Arms relaxed, or one arm slightly forward so it does not cover the waist. Pick one side and use the same one every time.
A back photo is optional. It is useful if you are training for shoulders and upper back, but the front and side carry most of the information.
What to wear
Wear fitted clothes that show the outline of your body:
- Bottoms: gym shorts or fitted shorts that sit at your natural waist. Not long baggy shorts that hide the thighs.
- Top: a fitted top, a fitted T-shirt or a sports bra. Shirtless is fine if you are comfortable, but it is not required.
- Same outfit every time. Different waistbands sit at different heights and press differently. Keep one set of clothes for progress photos.
Avoid loose T-shirts and hoodies. They hide the waist and hip line, which is exactly where most of the change shows.
Light: soft, from the front
The best light is soft daylight from a window in front of you, with the phone between you and the window or slightly to one side. It lights your body evenly without hard shadows.
Avoid:
- Overhead light, which carves shadows under the chest and across the stomach and exaggerates definition. Gym lighting is the classic example.
- Light behind you, which turns you into a silhouette and makes the phone darken the whole shot.
- Light from one side only, which lights half the body and hides the other half.
If daylight changes too much with the seasons, a single lamp in front of you, used the same way each time, is more consistent than a window.
Time of day: morning, before eating
Take the photo in the morning, after using the bathroom and before eating or drinking much. That is when the body is most consistent from day to day. By the evening, food, salt and water can change the look of the midsection noticeably.
Do not take the photo straight after training. The pump makes muscles look fuller for an hour or two and makes the comparison unfair to your next morning photo.
How to stand
Stand the way you normally stand. Not flexed, not sucking in, not pushing your chest out, not slouching. Breathe out gently and let your shoulders drop.
This feels less flattering than a posed photo, and that is the point. Relaxed is the one posture you can repeat exactly. A pose varies with effort and practice; your relaxed stance does not.
A useful check: look straight ahead at the camera rather than down at the screen, with your chin level. Tilting your head down rounds the shoulders in the photo.
Background
Stand in front of a plain wall or door, ideally a light, single colour. A busy background makes the outline harder to see and pulls the eye. Clear anything that sits right at the edge of your body in the frame.
Make it repeatable
The first photo sets the template. Write down, or photograph, your setup:
- Where the phone sits and how high.
- Where your feet go (a piece of tape on the floor helps).
- Which lens (1x) and the zoom level.
- The outfit.
- The time of day and the light.
Then repeat it every 2–4 weeks. Line up the new photo next to the old one at the same size. If everything else matches, what is different is real.
A checklist before you press the button
- Phone at chest or waist height, level, 2–3 m away.
- 1x lens, not 0.5x.
- Timer or a friend.
- Fitted shorts and a fitted top or sports bra.
- Soft light from the front, no overhead glare.
- Morning, before eating, not after training.
- Relaxed posture, arms slightly away from the body.
- Plain background.
- Front and side.
Your photos and Auraspire
Auraspire's Body Scan asks for one front photo and an optional side photo taken this way. Body photos are deleted as soon as your result is ready. If you want to know what a photo can and cannot tell you about body composition, the body-fat-from-a-photo guide covers it.
Questions people ask
- Why not just use a mirror selfie?
- A mirror selfie puts the phone in front of your chest, so it hides part of your body, sets the camera height by where your arm is, and changes distance every time. It is also often taken at the gym, under overhead light, after training. All of that makes two mirror selfies hard to compare. A phone on a stand at a fixed spot removes those variables.
- Should I flex?
- Not for the progress photo. Flexing changes with effort, practice and how pumped you are, so it adds noise. Take the relaxed photo first. If you want a flexed one as well for your own motivation, take it after, and compare flexed with flexed.
- How often should I take them?
- Every 2–4 weeks. Bodies change slowly, and daily or weekly photos mostly capture differences in water, food and light. Fewer, well-controlled photos show real change more clearly than many rushed ones.
- My phone has no stand. What can I use?
- Anything stable at the right height: a shelf, a stack of books on a chair, a windowsill, the top of a chest of drawers. Mark the spot with a small piece of tape on the floor where the phone sits and another where your feet go, so you can find both next time.
- What does Auraspire do with the photos?
- For the Body Scan, the photos are used to produce your result and deleted as soon as the result is ready. The result itself, your build type and the rest, is what is kept.
Sources
- Ward B, Ward M, Fried O, Paskhover B. Nasal Distortion in Short-Distance Photographs: The Selfie Effect. JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery, 2018;20(4):333–335. — a camera close to the subject enlarges whatever is nearest it; the same perspective effect applies to a body photographed from close up
- Majmudar MD, Chandra S, Yakkala K, et al. Smartphone camera based assessment of adiposity: a validation study. npj Digital Medicine, 2022;5:79. — an example of photo-based body-composition estimation tested against DEXA; why a consistent capture setup matters for comparing photos