How to photograph your brows for a consultation

The one photo that does most of the work

I'm Jisun, the owner of London Brow in Seoul. Before I can say anything useful about your brows, I need to see them, and a consultation that starts by message depends on one photo more than any other: your bare brows, straight on, in daylight, with a relaxed face. Everything else in this article is a detail of that sentence.

Why bare? Because the hair is what I work with. Brow pencil and powder cover the places where hair is thin or missing, and those places are exactly what I need to see. Why relaxed? Because a raised or frowning brow changes shape, and I design for the face you wear most of the day. If you keep only one rule from this page, keep this one: no makeup on the brows, no expression, no filter.

Light: face the window, not the lamp

Daylight from the front shows hair and skin as they are. Overhead room lights cast a shadow from the brow bone down onto the brow, which can make sparse hair look fuller and hide the lower edge. Warm lamps change the colour of the hair. A ring light can flatten everything so that fine hairs disappear.

Here is a quick test. Stand facing a window, then turn slowly until both brows are equally bright. Look at the screen before you press the button: can you see single hairs at the front of each brow, and the skin between them? If one side is in shadow, turn a little more. If the hairs blur into one shape, step closer to the window. Direct sun is too harsh; a bright, cloudy window is ideal.

Angle and distance: phone at eye level, whole face in frame

Hold the phone at the height of your eyes, straight in front of you, at a comfortable arm's length. From below, the brows look higher and the arch steeper. From above, they look lower and shorter. A tilted head makes one brow look higher than the other, which is a real question in many consultations, so I need to know whether a difference is in your brows or in the camera.

Keep your whole face in the frame, from hairline to chin. A close crop of the brows alone hides the things I read them against: the eyes, the forehead, the hairline. Check the result on the screen. Your nose should point straight at the camera and both ears should show about equally. If one ear disappears, your head is turned.

Filters, beauty modes and mirrored selfies

Many phone cameras smooth skin and sharpen features by default. That smoothing also softens fine brow hairs, which is the detail I most need. Look in your camera settings for a beauty, retouch or portrait mode and switch it off for this photo. Do not edit afterwards either, not even brightness. I post my own records unedited for the same reason: a photo is only useful for a brow decision if it shows what is there.

Front cameras often save a mirrored image. That is fine, but tell me if you know your photo is mirrored, because left and right swap. A simple fix is to take the photo with the rear camera, with someone else holding the phone, or to write 'mirrored' next to it. Which approach is easier differs from person to person; either works if I know.

Send the set like this

Consultations at London Brow are translation-assisted over WhatsApp, so photos carry a lot of the conversation for us. Send the bare-brow photo first. If you usually wear brow makeup, add a second photo with it on, taken in the same light. If you have a reference photo, add it last with a note on the one part you like. Then write one line: 'Bare brows, daylight, no filter. I want to change:' and finish the sentence. I will reply with what I can see in the photo and what I would ask you next.

Common questions