How I selfie shoot

10

You’ve already noticed that I do rather a lot of selfies using my mobile phone, but a few of you guys have asked me how I do them and get them to look good. What’s my secret? (With additional hidden content for 🥇🥈🥉)

Light is Important

The most important thing about photography is light. Lots of light. This is even more important for video as you’re essentially capturing loads of little photos. It’s very important that when capturing a selfie using a mobile phone that the light is all of a similar “colour”, unless you’re going for the artistic look, you should stick to a single colour temperature of light. All incandescent or all fluorescent is fine, but if you mix the two you can throw the colour balance of your photos and end up with odd skin tones.

Never shoot with the light behind you, and outdoors try and get the sun behind the camera or at an angle where it’s not near the field of view of the camera.

Of course with shiny fetish wear there’s always the chance of reflections and how you choose to use these is up to you, after all it’s meant to be shiny!

Clean your lenses

Your phone has just been in your pocket. The lenses are absolutely costed with oils and fats off your skin. Unless you’re going for a hazy look it is a good idea to clean the lens. Simple glasses cleaner tissues are great for this although if you’ve got got anything with you a wipe on your t-shirt will suffice.

Remote triggering

You have to have some way of triggering the photo, although at a push you can use the self timer function. Bluetooth remote triggers are cheap and readily available although if you have a smart watch remember you have a remote viewfinder and trigger always on your wrist. Many phones (particularly Samsung) also support voice and gesture triggering. In the case of mine, showing an open hand to the camera starts a self timer. I can also say “cheese” and it’ll take a photo although that isn’t as reliable especially in noisy environments.

If you’ve got one of the newer Samsung stylus devices and you have one of the pro styluses (Note 9, 10, 20, Fold 3 with pro stylus) you can use the button on the stylus as your trigger. Many of my photos have been taken this way. Note that not all the styluses support this – they have to be the Bluetooth ones that support air gestures. You can also use these to zoom in and out and change camera modes using air gestures.

Take Lots

Don’t just take 1 or 2, we’re not on film anymore. I’ll take a minimum of 15 photos, although in the set below taken back in December 2021 (full set available only to paid subscribers) I took 200!

Hopefully these insights have given you a few tips into taking the perfect selfie, but please feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll certainly try and help.

Here you are, my 🥇🥈🥉 paid subscribers, here’s your bonus photos – the full set of 200 including the bad ones!