Selfies

According to Urban Dictionary, a selfie is: A picture taken of yourself that is planned to be uploaded to Facebook, Myspace or any other sort of social networking website. You can usually see the person's arm holding out the camera in which case you can clearly tell that this person does not have any friends to take pictures of them so they resort to Facebook to find internet friends and post pictures of themselves, taken by themselves. A selfie is usually accompanied by a kissy face or the individual looking in a direction that is not towards the camera.

HAHAHAHA. That made me laugh so hard. Selfies are clearly looked down upon. I think they're looked down upon because it's not rare for someone to post five pictures of themselves every day on Instagram or Facebook. It gets annoying, especially if the photo is taken in the same spot every day, with horrible lighting, which brings me to the reason for this post. I take a lot of self portraits but most of them aren't taken with my iPhone and I have reasons for doing them. It's possible to take self portraits that aren't looked down upon. You just have to do a little work.

I take self portraits because I'm a photographer, because they help me learn body angles and poses, because I can teach myself about light, because I do outfit posts on my blog, and yes, because it's fun! So today I have some tips!

1. Figure out which remote works with your camera and get one! I have the RC-6 that works with my Mark II and it's so nice because I set my camera to the remote setting, I tell it where to focus, I hit the button on the remote, and voila! Also, don't forget to hide the remote when shooting. You've probably noticed that I'm terrible at this.

2. Buy a tripod. You can't really do self portraits without one. Get a nice, sturdy one that will hold your camera and lens safely if you are taking horizontals.

3. Pick a good time of day! Just like photographing your clients, unless you're going for something different, an hour or two before sunset is perfect!

4. Play around with light! Shoot with your body facing the light, shoot backlit! You never know what might turn out!

5. Take horizontals and verticals, faraway and close up! Variety is good. 

6. Change lenses. I tend to be bad at this but different lenses will give you different looks.

7. Don't shoot too wide! If I shoot at f/2 or even f/2.5 when my camera is doing the focusing, it's never going to be in focus. Unfortunately, shooing at f/3.2 is probably best for self portraits, unless you're some focusing genius.

8. Move around!! I usually do portraits in my yard but I never want them to look exactly the same so I move around a lot.

9. Wear a cute outfit! You'll feel much prettier and you'll have more fun if you're wearing something you're excited about.

10. Put on makeup! Makeup enhances your beauty and will cover zits and help your eyes and lips pop.

11. Do weird poses that you'd never have a client do. My favorite self portraits are the ones where I do the strangest things! Haha.

And now...... Get ready for the evolution of Meredith. Hahaha.