General

You can get an articulated phone mount, if you combine it with remote camera button, you can get the angles you want. You can use the timer feature too if you don’t want to have the button in the frame

EDIT: There’s also gooseneck phone mounts, if that’s more your style

To add onto what everyone else is saying, feel free to play around with your lighting, clothes, angles, and props. Don't be afraid to edit your pictures either. Adjusting the white balance, brightness, color saturation, cropping out things, ect.

I’ve long struggled with the same issue. What works for me is recording videos where i’m moving around, then carefully reviewing them frame-by-frame, finding the best moments then taking screen captures of those for use as regular “still image” photos.

It’s almost as good as having a professional photographer shooting a whole bunch of shots, or bursts of shots, to capture optimal moments.

Pretend you’re an attractive model as you move around, and you might get something really good this way. Or in my case, at least decent.

Do you all want a tutorial? Not being sarcastic, if you tell me your specific struggles and goals i can show a tutorial of how i do it from back of my cell.

I have a remote or you can use the thing on the phone where you say something and it does an action to click camera button, You put phone against something or on a tripod and pose. You can also do a 10 second timer.

You can angle it up to look bigger from a lower angle or do it above to look slimmer, You can slouch also to look thicker or you can elongate body to look slimmer.

good lighting is the key and what makes or breaks most photos .

I often take a video and screen capture my favourite poses and also time my selfies for 5 or 10 seconds while my phone is leaning on something for the pics I take of myself.

I never use a filter but my selfie mode seems to have an inbuilt filter that makes things slightly less sharp than the front facing camera. I haven't figured out how to change it.

I do sometimes increase the brightness if the light is a little dark otherwise I crop or censor my face then post.

Good luck!