How To Take The Ultimate Selfie
Mar 12, 2014
Laya Gerlock
Laya Gerlock is a Portrait and Product photographer based in the Philippines. His passion is teaching and sharing his knowledge in Photograpy and has been doing this for 6 years.
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Time magazine just named Makati City, Philippines as The Selfie Capital of the world. And as a proud Filipino I have done my shares of selfie in the interweb.
There are tons of selfies in the internet taken using a smartphone, but those do not compare to the greate selfies I have seen was on Flickr, where people take the time to light or setup their shots and use “real cameras” to take their selfies, just to name one that I always follow is Dustin Diaz’s flickr.
There are a lot of ways to do a selfie using your dslr, so to each his own, this is a quick tutorial on how I do my selfies. [editor note: Laya’s Selphies are some of the best I’ve ever seen so you may wanna hit the jump see what he has to offer]1. To start off you need to use a tripod. (or lay your camera down somewhere stable)
2. I think the hardest part in doing selfies is the focusing, because you are doing this alone (which I normally do), I place a lightstand which is my easy to manage, always available stand-in. I place the light stand where I will be standing and adjust the height of the lightstand as tall as my eyes. I prefocus on the silver part of the lightstand and switch my camera to manual focus. so It does not re-focus. Mark the floor or use an already existing mark to know where the light stand is even after you move it away.
3. If you have a wireless trigger, you just move to where the lightstand (stand-in) was, then move it somewhere or fold it so it won’t be seen in the camera then click the trigger.
4. If you don’t have a trigger, set your camera to timer mode (15-20sec), and do the same technique. Another option is to use the built in intervalometer (Nikon) or Magic Lanteren Intervalometer (Canon)
5. After that, it’s just a matter of adjusting your light.
Some Examples of selfies:
Sample 1 – For the love of hotpockets
Sample 2 – Reading on top of our roof
Sample 3 -Huwaatt??!
Sample 4 – HighSpeed Selfie
Sample 5 – Masked
I hope we are not going to regret this, but… Please share your selphies in the comments below :)
Laya Gerlock
Laya Gerlock is a Portrait and Product photographer based in the Philippines. His passion is teaching and sharing his knowledge in Photograpy and has been doing this for 6 years.
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14 responses to “How To Take The Ultimate Selfie”
the only time I do a “selfie” is when I want to test a new set up and can’t find a model or don’t want to use Rosie, my styrofoam head. I found that if you use live view, and facial recognition auto focus, w/ a remote trigger, you have it made.
As Robert said before me, my selfies are when I’m testing or trying something new out. Here’s a recent one I did that I ended up liking how it turned out…
Instead of a basic remote trigger, I’ve also started using the wireless on my 6d, connecting it via my iphone and setting up the focus that way.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cordesj/13024227885/
Beautiful!
None of those are selfies; they are self-portraits. A selfie is taken while holding the camera yourself. Don’t degrade your work by using a lesser word.
I may as well share the one I did a couple weeks ago as a lighting test for a headshot session I was planning: https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2841/12764053875_c5bbfd2e33_z.jpg
I’ll have to agree with Jayson – I’ve been taking self portraits for years but never take selfies….. http://alisonmphotography.smugmug.com/Self-Portraits/
I’ve been thinking about doing a second self-portrait (or as people nowadays call selfies). But when it comes to me, I thought about my film school education and how to apply it in the shot. I’m sure many may not agree with how I did it and the flaws of it, but I’m pleased with the first one. Just got to figure out what to do for the next one. http://codebreaker2001.deviantart.com/art/Self-Portrait-1-326857031
this is my selfie done some time ago… http://www.flickr.com/photos/cavalars/10589805626/
Not bad, can you explain the light setup? I dont have any manual light. Just a DSLR and 50mm lens. How to produce this quality using that gear ???
Did this one a time back… Just a single flash DIY snoot…
http://lh5.ggpht.com/-xTnUERnSwzc/TyBw8tNKr8I/AAAAAAAABYA/1b7u7CsbNm0/s1600/_DSC0324.jpg
Experiment I tried out.
Ack. I did a double post. Sorry about that.
An experiment I was trying out. (now to see if it uploads)
As many pointed out, these are not ‘selfies’…