Look like the decision-maker on every video call

01

It is not your face, it is your setup

02

Camera position: the two-minute fix nobody makes

• Lens at eye level, no exceptions. A laptop flat on the desk shoots up your chin and makes you loom down at everyone. Stack it on books until the lens meets your eyes.
• Sit about an arm's length from the lens. Closer distorts your features wide. Farther makes you the small guy in a big empty room. Head and top of shoulders filling the frame is the target.
• Look at the lens when you speak, not at the faces on screen. Drag the meeting window directly under your camera so your natural gaze lands next to the lens.
• Leave a little headroom. Your eyes should sit about a third of the way down the frame. Every professional broadcast frames a face this way, and viewers register it as competence without knowing why.

03

Lighting beats every other upgrade

• Face a window. Daylight from in front of you beats any gear. A window behind you turns you into a silhouette, and a window beside you splits your face in half.
• No window? One soft lamp behind your laptop, slightly above eye level, pointed at your face. Warm-to-neutral bulb, and never rely on the overhead ceiling light, which digs shadows under your eyes and reads exhausted.
• Kill mixed light. Blue daylight from one side plus yellow lamp from the other makes your skin look uneven on camera. One dominant source, one color.
• Test it the lazy way: open your camera app at the hour you usually take calls, screenshot yourself, and judge it like a stranger would. That screenshot is exactly what your VP sees.

04

What to wear on camera

• Collars win on webcam. A collared shirt or polo builds a frame around your face and reads authority even at 720p. A crew-neck tee reads weekend. If the call matters, wear the collar.
• Mid-tone solids only. Pure white blows out, black swallows all detail, and fine stripes or checks shimmer into moire patterns on camera. Navy, mid-blue, olive, and burgundy all hold up.
• Contrast with your background. A gray shirt against a gray wall makes you a floating head. One glance before the call: do you clearly separate from what is behind you.
• The camera magnifies fabric neglect. A pilled sweater or fuzzy knit collar that passes in person reads shabby in HD. A fabric shaver from the fix.style shop restores a knit in about two minutes, even right before the call.

05

Grooming and background for HD

• Check your edges. Stray neck hairs, uneven beard lines, and flyaways all show on camera. Ninety seconds with a trimmer before a big call is worth more than a new shirt.
• Kill forehead shine. Oil plus overhead light reads sweaty in HD. Blotting papers or a mattifying moisturizer, ten seconds before you join.
• If you look tired on screen, treat the under-eye area before you dial in. Cold water and a few minutes of cooling that zone shows up more on camera than it does in the mirror.
• Background: tidy and boring beats interesting. A plant, a lamp, a wall. A bed, an opening door, or visible laundry costs you credibility by the minute, and background blur is a fallback, not a plan, because the halo flickers around your head.
• Run a five-second pre-flight: camera height, light on face, collar straight, background clear, lens wiped. A greasy laptop lens is the most common soft-focus filter in corporate life.

06

What Fix Style gives you in 90 seconds