Self-Portrait Tips and Tricks

A few months ago, I wrote a post on how to take great portraits. I included self-portraits in that post, but I wanted to expand on my tips in today’s post. Self-portraits are a fun way to experiment with your camera and with different poses. With self-portraits, you can feel free to experiment a lot more than you might if you were doing someone else’s portraits. This is because you have more freedom to take the portraits how you want to do them without having to worry about anyone else except for yourself. Read on to learn how to take some amazing “selfies”!

Here are my top 5 tips on how to take your own portraits –

1)      Like mentioned in the portrait post, I would recommend using a camera that either has a flip screen, or a screen that you can see (like an iPhone). This makes it easier to pose yourself and to see how your facial expressions look.

2)      I would also recommend using props that fit your personality – like an old camera if you are into photography!

3)      Don’t be afraid to get silly and dance around while you are experimenting! This is how I started out, just moving around and finding out what pose worked best for me, and sometimes I even got some photographs of myself mid-twirl!

4)      I would highly recommend investing in a tripod if you are serious about doing your own portraits. Some of them are fairly cheap, and work really well – or you can get the more expensive ones if you so choose. However, they help to stabilize your camera while you are doing your portraits.

5)      My last tip is to set the timer on your camera. I usually set mine for ten seconds so that I can get back to my spot and get my pose ready before the photograph is taken. One other thing that I have found helpful sometimes is to set your timer, and then set your camera to take a series of photographs as well. This helps so that you are not running back and forth between each pose – you can get a few done instead.

Wadsworth Falls State Park

Wadsworth Falls State Park in Middletown, Connecticut is a location that offers hiking, swimming, biking, and picnicking. There are also waterfalls that you can visit – a big falls, and a little falls. Some information if you plan to hike – it is a bit confusing when you first start to figure out what trail you want to take to get to the waterfalls, so you really need to pay attention when you’re first getting going, as well as throughout the trail so you don’t miss any of the trail markers. It is also a bit of a long hike - about 3 miles there and back – but this depends on if you actually walk the trails or if you park near where the waterfall is. When you reach the end of the trail, there will be a marker labeled big falls pointing you to the right. You want to go in that direction until you come to the parking lot, and then there will be the path leading you to the waterfall. If you park closer to the big falls, it would only be a short walk down a path. I will say though that if you walk the trails be extremely careful because there are rocks and tree roots sprouted up all over the place. Just a word of caution – you are not supposed to swim in the big falls, however some people just don’t listen and do it anyways. Price to park on weekends is $9 for a CT registered vehicle and $15 for a not CT registered vehicle, on weekdays there is no charge.

Here are my top 5 tips for if you plan to visit Wadsworth Falls –

1)      If you are elderly, have young children, or simply just don’t want to do a lot of walking, then I would recommend you drive to where the big waterfall is located and take the short path down. 

2)      Like I mentioned, there are many signs at the falls stating no swimming, so don’t be one of THOSE people (the ones who blatantly disregard the rules and ruin things for everyone else!) 

3)      Wear some good walking shoes so you don’t kill your feet too bad if you plan to walk the trails. 

4)      Preserve the beauty of the park and do not litter!

5)      Watch out for the wildlife. We saw a frog and a snake while on the trail, so go with the “for every one you see, there are ten you don’t see” rule and watch where you are stepping!

Color Splashing

Color splashing is an editing technique used to add a splash of color to a black and white photograph. This technique is best suited for when you want to make a photograph black and white, but you also want to show off a key subject in the photograph. For these photographs, I used the Picmonkey photo editor. To get the color splash effect, there are two “effects” you can choose from – the focal b&w (harder) or the holga effect (easier). With the focal b&w, it is harder because you have to choose one set spot to focus on and you can’t move the effect that well. With holga, it will turn the photograph b&w, then you can edit that to your liking – and then you can use the paintbrush from the box that pops up to add color back to the areas of your choosing. Using the holga effect is definitely my preferred method.

Here are my top 2 tips for doing a color splash photograph –

1)      Choose a photograph with a subject(s) that you can focus easily on when you are first starting out. Take my example with the lemons, for example. It was really easy to focus on the lemons because they were basically one uniform shape.

2)      Try to keep it as clean as possible! You don’t accidentally want other colors in the photograph showing if they weren’t intended to be visible.

Digital Manipulation Introduction

One interesting way to change the way a photograph looks is to digitally manipulate it. There are many ways that you can do this, for example, the most basic way to manipulate a photograph is to add text to it, like some of the examples below. You can also do neat tricks with your photographs like the other examples I have here – making it look like steam is coming out of a coffee cup by combining images of your favorite mug and clouds is one of my favorite tricks. There are some other ways to manipulate images as well, like color splashing and doing a double exposure - which will be covered in future blog posts. To get a digitally manipulated image like the coffee cup example, you want to choose your base image (which would be the clouds) and then you want to add an overlay image (which would be the coffee mug). Then you want to erase any of the excess background image from the coffee cup and line it up to the clouds so that they appear to be steam rising up out of the mug.

Here are my top 2 tips for digitally manipulating an image –

1)      If you are adding text that is not your own quote, make sure to give credit where it is due.

2)      When you are erasing the excess material from your overlay image take it slow and easy! You don’t want to accidentally mess up and have to start over, learn from my mistakes and do it in small sections very slowly until you get it all erased.