Warm light, real rooms, and two kinds of picture
You said in Session 1 that you have no professional photos, a lot of first videos, and that Greece would be the ideal place while Belgium is the real one. Everything here is built for that: what you can shoot yourself this week with a phone, and the brief for a proper shoot when there is budget for it.
The direction, in one paragraph
Daylight, always. Warm neutral rooms: wood, linen, plaster, stone. Outdoors when possible: garden, water, hedge, sky. Clothing in the soft end of your own palette, the lavender, dusty blue and pale rose you already wear. One human, doing something real, in a space that looks like it exists. Nothing staged as serene. Nothing shot from above looking down at you. If a photograph could be sold as a stock image, it is the wrong photograph.
Two kinds of picture, doing two different jobs
Almost every mistake in this area comes from treating these as the same thing and shooting only one of them. They are not interchangeable, and you need both running at once.
You in the posture, moving, teaching, breathing. It is the proof of your craft, it is the format that travels furthest on Instagram, and it is the reason someone stops scrolling in the first place. You are a yoga teacher, so this is the majority of what you make, and it should be.
You, looking at the camera, saying something. It converts what the practice attracted. A woman watches the practice to decide whether you are good, and looks at your face to decide whether she wants to be in a room with you. Both decisions have to be made before she books.
The five shots, and which ones you already have
| Shot | What it does | Where it goes | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Practice, full body. Wide, plenty of space around you, one clean posture, entered slowly. | Reach and craft. Your main content engine, week after week. | Reels, class pages, YouTube | You have versions of these. Keep making them, and read the next block on how to shoot them better. |
| Your face, looking at the camera. Head and shoulders, daylight, calm background. | Trust. It is what turns a viewer into someone who books. | Profile picture, About page, every guest bio | Missing entirely. The one gap worth closing this month. |
| Your hands on the bowls. Close, warm, slightly from the side. A photo and a 15 second video with sound. | Difference. Sound healing is your most distinctive tool and the hardest one to show. | Reels, YouTube thumbnails, the site | Missing. Cheapest of all to make, and it takes ten minutes. |
| Teaching, from behind or from the side. You adjusting, watching, holding the room. | Ethics, made visible. It shows you holding a space rather than performing in one. | Workshop and class pages, social proof | Missing. Needs one other person and their permission. |
| The room, empty. Mats, bowls, a candle, light on the floor. | Every background you will ever need for text. | Carousel covers, stories, quote cards | Missing, and you will use these more often than any other file. |
How to shoot your own practice, properly
This is the content you will make most, so it is worth doing well. None of it needs equipment.
Hip height for standing postures, mat level for anything on the floor. Never from above, which flattens every line in the body and makes a strong posture look small.
Side on for backbends and forward folds, because the shape only reads from there. Three quarters for standing postures. Front on only for balances and for anything symmetrical.
Whole body, with space above the head and below the feet. Never crop a hand or a foot. If the frame is tight, move the phone back, do not make the posture smaller.
One posture per clip: enter slowly, hold, leave slowly. The entering is the interesting part and it is what people copy. A clip that starts in the final shape teaches nothing.
Plain behind the body, so the silhouette reads. The wood wall works, the garden hedge works. A shelf full of objects behind your head does not.
Whenever the posture is hard, film the accessible version first and the full one second. It is honest, it is useful, and it matches what you say about holding a space rather than performing in it.
The phone protocol, for this week, at no cost
- Time of day. The first two hours after sunrise or the last two before sunset. Never midday, never overhead ceiling lights, never a ring light.
- Where the light comes from. Face a window, do not stand with your back to it. If you are outside, put the sun behind you and your face in open shade.
- Camera height. At your own eye level or slightly below, never above. Phone on a stack of books, timer on, ten frames, walk back and choose later.
- Format. Shoot vertical 4:5 and 9:16 for social, and one horizontal version of each for the site. Shooting horizontal only and cropping later is how people end up with no usable photos.
- Sound. For the bowls, record in a quiet room with the phone one metre away. Bad audio kills a sound healing video faster than bad video.
- Editing. Warmth up slightly, contrast down slightly, and do not touch the colour strength. No filters, no presets that turn skin orange or the room grey. If the photo looks edited, go back one step.
- Wardrobe. Plain, soft, no logos, no busy prints. Your lavender, dusty blue and pale rose. Keep two or three outfits and repeat them, so the grid holds together.
Where to film, with what you already have
You asked about backgrounds on the call. The honest order of importance is light first, background second, equipment last. You already own the two things that matter most: a microphone and a room with a purple wall.
The purple wall is already your colour, which no rented studio can give you. Clear it, leave two or three plain objects, face a window and film there. It does not depend on the weather, which matters because winter is two months away.
Green, water and open sky, and it is the only one with a season on it. Film the outdoor practice you want for the next six months before the weather turns, and keep it for later. Batching outdoors now is the single most time sensitive thing in this whole document.
The wood wall is beautiful and the light there is not. Use it for the shots that need a real room with real people, and do not use it for anything where your face has to carry the frame.
What to wear · shorts or pants, tops or T-shirts
You asked for a picture of the ideal outfit. A picture would tie you to one garment you may not own, so here is the rule instead, which is more useful and which you can apply to the clothes already in your wardrobe. The whole thing comes down to one question: can the camera see the shape your body is making?
| Question | The answer | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Shorts or pants? | Full length leggings for practice content, almost always. | Shorts move on every transition, so the eye follows the fabric instead of the line of the leg, and you spend the whole clip adjusting them. Leggings hold the shape and let a viewer see the alignment, which is the only reason she is watching a practice video. Shorts are fine for one case: a floor sequence where the knee itself is the subject. |
| Top or T-shirt? | A fitted top for practice. A T-shirt is fine for talking to camera and for the bowl shots. | A loose T-shirt falls over your head in every forward fold and inversion, which ruins the frame and makes you cut the clip. When you are seated, talking, or working with the bowls, nothing falls, so wear whatever is most comfortable and most like you. |
| How many outfits? | Two or three, repeated. | The grid holds together and nobody notices repetition on Instagram. What people do notice is a new outfit in every post, which reads as effort rather than as practice. |
| One or two colours? | One tone from head to foot whenever the posture matters. | A dark top with light leggings cuts your body in half at the waist and the shape stops reading from a distance. Same tone top and bottom, and the whole line is visible in one glance. |
Your colours, which are already the ones you wear. These are the palette to buy inside. Anything in this range will sit correctly against linen walls, wood and green.
- Plain fabric, no pattern, no text, no visible logo
- The soft end of your own palette, above
- Bare feet, always, including on video calls where they are visible
- Hair the way you actually wear it to teach, not styled for the camera
- Pure white, which loses all detail in daylight and turns into a bright shape
- Pure black, which disappears against the wood wall and a dark room
- Prints, stripes, mesh panels and anything shiny, which all flicker on video
- Neon or saturated brights. They are not in your palette and they date fast
- Jewellery that moves or makes a sound, especially near the bowls
What to film in the garden, before the weather turns
You asked what garden practice to film. The rule is: film only what cannot be filmed indoors in January. Anything you can shoot against your purple wall in December is not urgent. Green, sky, open air and natural sound are, and they have about six weeks left.
| Priority | What to film | What it becomes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bare feet on grass and on earth, walking slowly, then standing still. Close on the feet, then wide with the whole body. | Gate 1, the root, which is your first video, your first carousel and the post you will repeat most. Grass in January does not exist. |
| 2 | One standing sequence, filmed side on, with sky or hedge behind you and nothing else in the frame. Enter slowly, hold, leave slowly. | Two or three Reels. Shot side on, one sequence gives you several usable clips at different crops. |
| 3 | A bowl outdoors, on the ground, with the birds and the wind audible in the recording. Phone one metre away, no music added later. | The most distinctive sound content you can make, and it is impossible to fake indoors. Nobody else in your feed has it. |
| 4 | Seated, eyes closed, green behind you, two full minutes without cutting. | Background for quote cards, story frames and carousel covers all winter. This is the file you will use most and it takes two minutes to make. |
| 5 | Movement without a shape: slow spirals of the arms and hips, no posture, eyes closed. Gate 2 and gate 6. | The dance and embodiment content, which is the hardest to film indoors because it needs space around you. |
The professional shoot, when there is budget
Half a day, two locations, natural light only. Deliverables: 8 portraits looking at camera, 12 practice frames shot from hip height and side on, 12 detail shots of hands, bowls, feet and cloth, 6 empty room frames, and 3 short video clips with usable sound. Mood words: warm, plain, present, unhurried. No smoke, no dramatic backlight, no flowing fabric in the wind, and no posture chosen for how hard it is.
Belgium is fine and Greece is not required. The wood studio you already film in is genuinely good: warm, simple, and the slats read as texture rather than decoration. Add one outdoor location with green and water. Save the Greek landscape for the retreat, where it will actually mean something because you will be there.
- Bare feet, real floors, visible breath and effort
- A face that is thinking, not performing calm
- Ordinary objects: a candle, a cup, a mat rolled up
- Empty space in the frame for text to sit later
- Eyes closed with the face lifted to the sky
- Sunset silhouettes on a beach with the arms open
- Anything shot in a mirror, or with a visible phone
- Crystals, incense smoke, or flowers arranged for the camera
- The hardest posture you own, used as proof of anything