Asian girls know how to pose* for a photo. They have 28** standard poses for use in avatars and profile shots, hence asianposes.com.

There's 28 because pulling the same pose all the time leads to boredom amongst your 1,097 facebook friends, and if we're honest, makes us consider hiding you in the news feed.

Fear not, we've consulted TheVine's best professional photographer and facebook friend Stu Morley for his tips on how to look your best in a profile photo or avatar shot. He shot this beautiful winter coats piece for us.

Stu's top tips for excellent profile shots:

1. Keep your camera handy - The best shots are when you are in the moment, like the start of a night out, with a couple of Appletinis under your belt.

2. Take multiple shots - Turn this ecstatically amazing moment into a mini fashion shoot. Take a couple of shots, assess the photos, suck your guts in, laugh uncontrollably, and shoot a couple more. Repeat this process until you are satisfied, bored or someone is hitting you over the head with a rolled up newspaper to get you to rejoin your friends and stop being such a vain git.

3. Work the angle  - The standard lens on a happy snap camera is slightly wide angle, which makes everything close seem larger and further away seem smaller. A lower angle will make your body and chin seem slightly larger than normal in comparison to your eyes, not to mention it closes your eyes slightly and makes you seem disconnected, snooty or scared. Raising the camera angle or leaning in to the shot brings your eyes closer to the camera making them slightly larger than normal and also opens them up making you seem more awake, interested and happier.

4. Fill the frame - This isn't perfect for every shot and please feel free to be a little creative by taking into consideration your surroundings, but if it is purely a flash photo with darkness surrounding or a nondescript situation, get the photographer to get closer because the portrait is mainly about the face. I have a sneaky suspicion that manufacturers of your everyday cameras have become wise to the "arms length self portrait" and designed the lens to suit this situation slightly. So if there is someone else taking your portrait they might be better off being about an arms length away from you.

5. Control your face - Some people think that the perfect photo face is learnt by practicing at home in front of the mirror while listening to "I believe I can fly" by R Kelly. This in part is true, but no one wants to look the same in every photo.

I am led to believe that a large percentage of the brain is used to decode what other people are feeling/thinking by the sight of their face. This information in relation to having your photo taken means that if you are scared or apprehensive about a photo being taken of you, you will, more often than not, see those feelings seeping through your staged smile, to create an unsatisfactory result compared to your egotistical, self-centred friends who love a good photo moment. 

Change this attitude by repeating to yourself some positive mantras leading up to and during camera time, like "This is so much fun. I am so happy. Michael Jackson is reincarnated as my dog. I really think that that hickey from last night makes my neck seem sexier." This differing attitude will change how your face is represented, making you like the look of yourself in photos a little more, giving you more  confidence in general and after an upward spiral of joyous, enthusiastic times displayed like a coming-of-age montage, will momentously change your life... FOREVER!

*Gross generalisation.
**Approximation