How To Look Your Best in Video Chats

If you’re like any other well-connected woman, you spend some time online in video chats every week. There are video conferences to attend for work; romantic date-chats on Skype; Go-To-Meeting seminars; Q&A in streamed presentations.

Here’s the advice on how to make a fantastic visual impression from that very first click!

Look Your Best in Video: Create the Perfect Setting

Three factors are crucial in creating the perfect setting for your video chatting session: appropriate lighting, a suitable background and a sense of orderliness.

To set up great lighting for your perfect scene, set up multiple sources of light projection. The light should never be projected directly to you. The best position for a light source is behind your desktop or laptop screen.

Make sure that the lighting consists of warmer tones instead of the bright, luminous, commercial lighting you often find. If you don’t use warmer tones, skin imperfections will be more visible or a greasy effect might take over your face. In particular, a bright light cast under your eyes will make you appear to have fatigued, baggy eyes – or worse, will make you appear wrinkly and old!

With a bit of planning, it’s quick and easy to create a suitable background. Strive for simplicity and elegance in your background. You don’t want to distract the person who is chatting with you. A single, dark-coloured background is a better choice than one with a multi-coloured range of dark and light colours combined with patterns that may cast a variety of shadows onto your face.

In addition, make sure the background – and that means anything that your fellow chatter can see behind and around you – is clean and tidy. A disorderly background will, of course, be distracting.

Look Your Best in Video: Polish Your Appearance

Two important aspects of your appearance while video chatting are your style of clothing and careful application of a bit of makeup.

You’ll do best to dress in a contrasting colour to your background. Just make sure that your clothing is not too light in colour. Avoid, if possible, wearing anything with a pattern (especially a bright one) unless you can make it work well with your background. Do not wear glossy fabrics so as to prevent the casting of dark shadows onto your skin. Wear as little jewellery as possible – once again, you don’t want to distract your video chat partner.

Brighten up your face with some cosmetics! Emphasise your beautiful appearance with foundation, contouring pencils and concealer. MAC face powder is enough to achieve the perfect complexion on-screen. Ensure that your face makeup is not too thick or dark. Applying a bright shade of lipstick will make your face look bright and lively and draw attention right to where you want it.

Look Your Best in Video: Position Yourself Correctly

Positioning yourself in the correct way means setting the camera at the most flattering angle with respect to your face. It also requires you to maintain eye contact, sit up straight and ensuring your upper body stays within the screen’s frame.

First, make sure that the camera is never pointing upwards from below you towards your face. Such an angle will make your face seem broader than it actually is. You don’t want to show off your nostrils or make it look like you’ve got a double chin! Preferably set up the camera to point at you, level with your forehead, or projecting downwards from a higher platform. Then your face will appear normal, or may even look much slimmer than it actually is!

It is of utmost importance to maintain direct eye contact with your fellow chatter. To do this you must look into the camera. If you are on Skype, suppress the temptation to watch the small dark preview box at the bottom of your screen. In fact, you’d do better to turn off that option so that the preview box doesn’t appear at all. The fact is that if you don’t gaze directly towards your viewer, it will seem as if you’re not interested in chatting with him/her. There’s a chance that your chatting partner may even be offended.

Finally, remember to position the camera so that your upper body is included within the frame of the screen. To ensure that you are maintaining your position, sit up straight so that both your face and upper body can be seen.

A final personal suggestion is to do a practice test with a close friend. He or she can honestly review how you appear in the video chat. Your friend can also critique the quality of the video and sound, as well as draw your attention to any random issues that might annoy or distract a video chat partner from what you really want to say.

Always remember: “We are operating in a world where one good video can lead to a massive social following”– Mike Henry.