How To Turn Selfies Into Art

In my first blog, I talked about taking my first selfies while wearing BodyAware products.  These first pictures got me started in the hobby of photography. After taking a few pics and then playing around I was able to create images that I feel are more than pictures. I think of them as art. Editing your raw pics can make a good photo GREAT. There are tons of apps available to edit pictures. All of them offer the features we are going to use here.

Here’s how to take your pictures to the next level:

You can use your cell phone to take pics but I always use a digital camera on a tri-pod. I find the images come out much better with the camera solidly mounted.

I learned right away that lighting is the most important part of a photo. Lighting can hide or accentuate all your flaws.  

One of the first things you can do is try the same photo with and without the flash. For this article I did a session in front of a window with the blinds open and closed. Here is the first picture:

There are lots of things wrong with this picture. We can see that the flash went off and washed out the image. Also, the model is in a weird pose. We can see some unwanted items in the picture like the ironing board and un-made bed. Let’s change some things.

Here the model has changed his pose and the flash has been shut off. This is much better! The light coming through the blinds makes a great contrast on the model. This photo is better than the first but the model is not the focus of the picture. There’s an ironing board in the picture and part of a wall. Not to worry. EVERY phone and camera allows you to crop a picture. Let’s crop this.

After I cropped it I lightened the photo just a bit. Now that’s more like it! This has some great contrast, the model is the focus of the picture and we allow a natural part of the photo to frame it. In this case the window. 

Finally for that artistic effect........let's convert it to black and white.

Don’t be afraid of taking pictures, In today's day and age you don't have to waste film. You can take as many pictures as you want until you get just the right shot.

It took 10 shots and some minor editing to get the final photo, and I am very happy with the way it came out.

Like anything, practice makes perfect.

Taking selfies can be fun by yourself but get your partner involved and have even more fun. 

Questions? Comments I’ll do my best to answer.

Have a great weekend!