You don't need a great camera or much skill. You need five minutes and maybe a window.

Much of what's recommended here is for DIY photography. If you have a skilled friend to help, you can get better results, but that's often not practical for intimate photos.

BEFORE YOU SHOOTpun intended

Use the camera on the BACK of your phone

The front ("selfie") camera is the lower quality one. The back camera has a better lens and sensor, so you get a sharper, cleaner picture.

Don't use a webcam. It's the worst camera you own — tiny lens, poor in low light, and it sits below you pointing up, which is nobody's best angle. Same for screenshots of video calls: those are squashed down twice over and come out soft and blocky.

Consider using the timer function

Whilst the mirror selfie is one of the easiest ways to do this, it’s obviously a selfie. Your phone will have a timer function. Although it’s not as easy to get yourself in the frame first time, it does allow you to take a more natural pose, you don’t need to worry about obscuring yourself with the camera or its case, and it doesn't have the ‘no mates’ undertone a selfie does. 

Clean the mirror

Toothpaste specks, water spots and smears are invisible to you and glaringly obvious in the photo. They also catch the light and haze the whole picture. Thirty seconds with some kitchen roll is the difference between a photo that looks considered and one that looks grim.

Clean the lens

Your phone lives in a pocket. Fingerprints and lint make photos look washed out. Use a glasses or microfibre cloth, and blow the grit off first — a dry t-shirt with a grain of sand in it can scratch the glass. Don't use your finger; it just spreads the grease.

Turn the flash off

In a mirror it fires straight at the glass and bounces back down the lens, leaving a white blob where you used to be. Anywhere else it flattens you out and burns whatever's nearest into a white patch. Find the lightning-bolt icon and switch it off.

Face a window

Daylight is flattering and it's free.

• Stand facing the window so the light falls on you.
• Don't stand with the window behind you — you'll come out as a silhouette.
• Avoid a ceiling light directly overhead. It drops hard shadows into your eyes and under your nose.

Look at what's behind you

People notice the background before they notice you. Check what's in frame: laundry, an open toilet, the washing-up, the state of the floor. Move yourself, or move the mess.

TAKING THE PHOTO

Don't hide behind the device

Held in front of your face or flat against your chest, the phone becomes the subject. Hold it off to one side, around hip or waist height, tucked in near your body.

This matters far more with a tablet. An iPad blots out most of your torso and a good part of your face. A phone in a folding wallet case is nearly as bad — the open flap doubles its width, so fold it right back or take it off. If a tablet is all you've got, prop it up and use the timer instead of holding it.

In a mirror, look at the phone — not at yourself

Nearly everyone gets this wrong. The camera records where your eyes are pointing, so if you look into your own eyes in the mirror, the photo shows you gazing off to one side. Look at the phone's reflection and you're looking straight at whoever's viewing it.

Get the distance right — both ways

Too close and the lens stretches whatever's nearest to it. That's the lens, not you. Reaching the phone out towards a mirror barely helps, because the camera is photographing your reflection, which sits as far behind the glass as you are in front of it. Stepping back helps twice as much.

Too far and you're a small figure in a big empty room. Whatever you hoped we'd notice, we can't see it.

Head and shoulders, waist up, full length — all fine. What matters is that you fill the frame. Doing this later with cropping reduces the image quality, as does using a digital zoom when taking the pic.

No mirror? Prop the phone on a shelf or windowsill, step back, and use the timer (usually a clock icon). 

Arms length selfies have a tendency to be unflattering due to being too close (lens effects again) and anyway, they are generally too cropped.

Tap the screen before you shoot

That tells the camera what to focus on and how bright to make it — otherwise it may focus on the wall and leave you blurry. Hold still for a second after you press the button.

This is where using the timer function can let you down. You're not in the frame to fix the focus, but modern phones do a pretty good job of this without assistance, especially if the background is uncluttered, as recommended, but worth doing is you can. An out of focus pic is usually just dull, not 'arty'.

Don't zoom. On most phones it just crops and throws away detail. Move your feet instead.

Take plenty

Nobody gets it first go. Shoot a batch and vary the angle as you go. You'll choose between them later.

BEFORE YOU UPLOAD

Upload it as it is

No filters, no "beauty" mode, no skin smoothing, no face slimming, no muscle or body reshaping, no editing apps.

A filtered photo has to keep the promise it makes. It might look convincing on its own, but it won't match your other photos, it won't match you on cam, and it won't match you in person. All you've done is guarantee an awkward moment later — and people remember being misled far longer than they'd have noticed an ordinary photo.

Worth checking: some phones apply smoothing by default. Look in your camera settings for "beauty", "smooth skin" or "face retouch" and turn it off.

Cropping, straightening and a small brightness nudge are fine. Changing what you look like is not what dudesnude is about.

Don't upload fifteen versions of the same photo

This is the most common mistake on the whole site. Scrolling through the same pose in the same mirror, sometimes even on the same afternoon, is dull, and people stop looking before they reach the end.

Pick a genuinely varied handful instead: different setting, different light, different day, close up and full length, dressed and — with the emphasis here — undressed. That's what people came to look at, and a varied set holds attention far better than a wall of near-duplicates.

Have a last look on a big screen

A photo that looks fine on a phone can look soft or badly lit on a monitor. Check before you commit.

Verification photos

Your verification photo is never shown to other members. It goes to the verification page and stays there. It exists only to confirm that the person in your profile pictures is you.

So it needs to be sharp, clearly lit, and show enough to match what's on your profile. If your face appears on your profile, your verification photo needs to show your face. If it doesn't, it doesn't need to — a face photo is optional, though it does tend to get you a better response and makes a verification pic easier to match.

Absolutely no filters or editing here. An edited verification photo can't do the one job it's there for, and it'll be refused.

Quick checklist

• Mirror clean
• Lens clean
• Back camera, not front, not a webcam
• Flash off
• Light on me, not behind me
• Background not embarrassing
• Device not blocking half of me — especially a tablet
• Looking at the phone's reflection, not at myself
• Filling the frame, not lost across the room
• Sharp and in focus
• No filters, no smoothing, no reshaping
• A varied set, not ten copies of one photo