Make a good impression

Do you look good on Zoom? I was on a Zoom call today, and I was amazed at how many attendees looked terrible. They’re not terrible-looking people in person, so why did they look so bad on Zoom? I decided to figure out how you can look good on Zoom (or any other video conference platform) for free.

The way to look good on Zoom is pretty simple. Light yourself, not the room. Sit up in your chair. Raise your camera to near eye level. Make sure you’re framed in the camera as head and shoulders with just a little headroom at the top of the window. Stage your background. Wear appropriate clothes that expose well and visually separate you from your background. Make eye contact with the camera (not the screen) when you’re talking.

Improve your lighting

The worst lighting is no lighting, but a close second is backlighting and the third is overhead lighting. To look the best and most natural, you want soft, diffused light falling on your face from slightly above eye level. There are a lot of ways to achieve this, and lighting faces for imaging is an entire career skill set for those working in film, photography, and TV. Lighting for video is a deep subject with the potential for a lot of detail and expense. Fortunately, there are some easy ways to get good results in your home with inexpensive things you probably already have.

A window

A window with indirect light gives excellent quality light for video. If you place your webcam and yourself so that you’re facing the window, but not in direct sunlight, you’ll notice an immediate improvement compared to the standard overhead light. The challenge with window light, of course, is that it changes with time and weather. So it’s not a great choice for early morning or late afternoon or even windy and partly cloudy days when the light level changes quickly. In these situations, it’s time to turn on a light.

A desk or utility lamp

The big problem with overhead lighting is that it falls on top of your head, leaving unflattering shadows on your face and under your eyes. Using a desk lamp or simple utility light allows you to place the light so that it’s falling more flatteringly on your face. A little off to one side and a little above eye level is a good place to start. Just like sunlight, though, if you shine it directly on your face, the light will be harsh with hard shadows. The solution is to either bounce the light off a wall or pass it through a diffuser to soften it. Some simple things that can work are white plastic trash bags, pillowcases, and white shower curtains. Experiment a bit with what you’ve got. Just be careful not to place anything directly on the bulb. Leaving some distance between your diffuser and the bulb will work better and avoid the risk of melting something.

Raise your camera to eye level and sit up

With any virtual meeting, we’re trying to create a remote experience that’s as close as we can get to an in-person meeting. A better sense of presence improves engagement and eases communication. So let’s adjust your setup to mimic, as close as we can, what others would see if you were sitting across the table. Think of it like the camera is your co-worker’s face. Place their eye level about the same as yours. Sit up. Raise your camera to close to your eye level. That’s where real people would be seeing you from, right? Seriously. Would your co-worker be in your lap looking up your nose? Then why are you looming over your laptop or iPad like that? Please stop. 

Head and shoulders framing

Great. Now that you’re sitting up and looking at your camera like a fellow human, it’s time to check your distance. In a face-to-face meeting with colleagues, what do you see? Are you close enough to see their pores and feel their breath on your face? No? Are you standing so far back that you can’t see their expressions or where they’re looking? There’s an ideal distance that’s comfortable for everyone. Close enough to see your colleague’s eyes and facial expressions, but not so close you can see what they had for lunch. 

It’s almost the same in virtual meetings. Because the screen and thumbnail images you see of your coworkers are often small, it’s good to be a _little_ bit closer on camera than you would be in person. Aim for your head and the top of your shoulders to be filling the frame. Leave a little room above your head, so it isn’t cut off. Your eyes should be close to, or just above, the center of the frame. This way, when you’re showing up in a gallery-view thumbnail, people can still see your face.

If you know you’re going to be the only thing on the viewer’s screen, such as in a one-on-one virtual interaction or a one-to-many video or webinar, you can pull back a little. Then a wider shot that shows your whole upper body from the waist up, and catches more of your surroundings, can be less overwhelming to the viewer.

Stage your background

Even if you plan on using a virtual background, your real background is still important. 

First, there will be a time when your real background is visible. Maybe a glitch, maybe a restart, or maybe you just forget to turn it on, but sooner or later, your virtual background won’t be on and your co-workers will see your space in all its reality. You’d like that to be a good experience for everyone, right?

Like so many things, this is a time when less is more. Casey Neistat aside, a simple, uncluttered background almost always looks better. A clean bookshelf, a tidy room, maybe a sign, a picture, a plant, or a small lamp (called a practical, in lighting lingo), and you’re good to go. A plain blank wall is safe, and it can work, but it’s boring. If you’re too close to that wall, you’ll look like you’re preparing for your mugshot. A few tidy details will add interest and depth to the scene without distracting from the main focus: you.

Dress to show up

Now that your lighting, framing, and background are set, it’s time to address the most important part of your video image: how you look personally. If you’ve been dressing yourself for work this far in your life, it should be easy. Dress like you’re going to work because that’s exactly what you are doing. 

It can be tempting to dress down since you’re working from home. To a point, this is expected and acceptable. I don’t wear my slacks and Allen Edmonds Park Avenues in my home studio like I would at work. No one can see them anyway. These days at home, dark Levi’s are my pants of choice. That way I’m comfortable, and if I do have to stand up for any reason, at least no one will see sweats. 

From the waist up, though, it’s good to be closer to business normal. There are a few things to think about that are special to being on camera, though.

Cameras can’t manage as wide a range of brightness as human vision, so if you have both white and black or bright light and deep shadow, the camera won’t be able to expose both properly. You’ll either have blown-out white highlights or blacked-out shadows with no apparent detail in either. You can exploit this effect to create a scene with you in front of a detailless white or black background.

If you’re not sure, though, it’s best to avoid a wide dynamic range, and stick with mid-tone solid colors. At the same time, aim for some color contrast between yourself and your background. You want the separation to draw attention to yourself. As a bonus, your virtual background will work better, too.

Make eye contact with the camera

This final tip is possibly the hardest one. It doesn’t feel natural at first to look into the camera when you’re talking. This is especially true in a virtual meeting when the person you’re talking to is looking back at you from your screen, just a few inches away from your camera. The natural thing to do is to look at them on the screen. Unfortunately, this gives them the impression that you’re NOT looking at them. Eye contact can only be made through the lens. If you want people to feel that you’re looking at them when you speak, you must look into the camera’s lens. It feels unnatural for you, but a natural connecting experience for them. 

Practice

Try these tips out in a private meeting for yourself. Log in on a separate device and record the session as if you were a colleague watching you. Test out different lighting, different framing, and different backgrounds. Speak while you’ve got everything set up as you’d normally do, then record some more with these tips implemented. See what a difference they make in how you show up. Tweak. Adjust. Improve. Once you see what you can do, come back for more tips and education. You never know how good you’ll be, until you practice what you learn. Thanks for reading!