welcome to another episode in my series on mobile photography for beginners
in this episode i will share five tips on how to take some great selfie images let's rule the intro
i'm Loïc Bellemare-Alford and if you're like me you have become the dedicated photographers
for your friends and family which means you're not as much inside of the images anymore this
also means you're gonna have to take pictures of yourself but the pictures don't need to be
awkward or unnatural most modern smartphones have a fixed focus front-facing lens so this basically
means that if you're trying to take a picture of yourself too close your face is going to be blurry
in my test most of the smartphones seem to be calibrated to have a full alarm length away to
be sure that your face is nice and sharp inside of the image so all of this to say that my first tip
is to hold the phone as far away as possible to be sure that your face is perfectly in focus
or not in words perfectly sharp inside of the image on more modern smartphones or more high-end
smartphones you might have for autofocus in the front-facing lens and in this case you don't
need to be using the phone as far because even if you keep it close you're still gonna be getting
some great results another problem for fixed focus lens is actually that everything in the background
is also in focus or underwater everything in the shot is always perfectly sharp if you look
at professional portrait images there's usually a nice little background blur and this is known
as bokeh the good news is that most modern smartphones actually have a mode which is known
as portrait mode that allows you to add some fake blur in the background to simulate this effect if
you don't know how to access your portrait mode on your ios or android app you should go check out my
walkthrough for both platforms to learn how to use them but if we open here on the camera and
we access the portrait mode we're gonna see that up to now nothing is different but if we go here
and we take a shot using the project mode and then we go on the viewing option we actually
says processing the shot and that the background blur is going to appear after the processing and
the little pro tip is that you can actually most of the time it is how much blur you have in the
background so if we go here on edit options then we go inside of adjust and we go on the
blur option we can actually decide if you want to have more blur or if you want to have less
blur in the background skin really control how much blur you want to have inside of your shot
another very important thing to note is actually that the background blur is fake blur created
using artificial intelligence so sometimes it has a hard time detecting what are the edges of your
photo which can be a problem so the pro tip for this is actually to just take different pictures
because just changing a little bit of camera around can give you completely different results
and can actually work sometimes better just even if you just move the camera just a little bit when
taking a picture using the portrait mode my next step to get some great selfie images is actually
about the angle and this is very important so you want to make sure that when you're taking pictures
you have the camera at the same height as your own eyes if you take it down too much or take it up
too much you're going to get some very unnatural looking images because most people are using you
at the same height as their eyes not lower or higher so you want to be sure that you're at
the same height as your eyes with the camera lens of your phone if you want to be a little bit more
creative it's actually possible to still get some more creative shots and you could turn around the
camera look away from the lens or something like that to get some much more interesting
shots that people are not used seeing when taking selfie images another thing that is very important
when talking about camera angles for selfies is actually you need to look through the lens
of your camera if you're looking at the screen when taking the images which is pretty normal
because most people look at their self when taking a selfie image you're actually not looking through
the camera lens so it doesn't look like if you're looking at the camera when taking the shot so for
this i usually look at the screen to compose my shot and then i look to the camera lens when
taking the shot so this way i'm sure that i always have my eyes that are looking for the lens not
through the screen when taking in a good selfie image this is now the part where we get a lot more
creative inside of the video and this is adding a foreground subject inside of your selfie image
if you don't know what is a foreground subject it's anything that's between your camera lens
and your face for this a really great foreground subject is any branch leaves or things like that
that are pretty easy to find wherever you live and for this you want to take your camera place
it through the branches here to add some depth to the image but you just want to make sure that
you're not hiding your face you don't want to have the foreground subject hiding your face you want
to make sure that your face is still perfectly visible inside of the shot the reason why creating
this is so great it's going to add some depth to the image you're going to have multiple layers
between your face and the camera lens and it's also great because it can make look
the image like if it was somebody else looking the image and not yourself taking a picture
of you my last tip is all about the right lighting to take some selfie images for this you want
to have some very soft light the good news is that it's very easy to get some soft lighting
because all you need is a cloudy day outside the reason is that when the light hits the clouds
it's going to diffuse it and create a very natural and good looking light for your face another great
time to take some selfie images is at sunrise or sunset because the light is usually softer
but there's also a very nice glow and color inside of the light that's usually more orange or pink or
colors like that that can create a very cool look when taking selfie images if you're like me and
right now there's only a sunny day outside there's actually two things you can do so the first one
is either go underneath shade to get some more balanced lighting or the other one is to take
the picture by having the light in the background right here avoid having your face directly under
the sun because this can allow to get some more even lighting on your face and it's also going to
add some nice little detail around your shoulders to separate you from the background i hope you
enjoyed this episode on taking selfie images in my series on mobile photography for beginners if you
did please let me know by hitting the like button below and definitely subscribe for the upcoming
episodes and if you haven't already go check the previous ones see you in the next one bye
you