Seven ideas for successful self-portraits

You see people doing it everywhere – holding a camera at arm’s length, grinning at the lens and taking a photo.

Self-portraiture is a popular activity.

Pretty well every famous photographer has created self-portraits – Robert Capa, Edward Weston, Diane Arbus, Weegee, Henri Cartier-Bresson – there’s a fine collection of them on the Listicles website.

Self-portraiture is so popular that you can even buy compact cameras with a second viewing screen on the front, beside the lens, to help you photograph yourself using the ‘arm’s length’ technique.

Sure, that’s one way of doing it. But it’s a somewhat boring and unoriginal way. All you’re likely to get is a snap of your face with your arm stretched out below it.

You can do better than that. And I don’t mean by using a mirror, either.

With a bit of ingenuity and creativity the sky’s the limit. After all, you’re the model. You can do what you like. And you may be surprised at what you can do.

Here are seven tips to give you some ideas for self-portraits with a difference …

1. Use a remote release* as well as the self-timer

Using your camera’s self-timer for self-portraits is a no-brainer. Its 10-20 second delay allows you to get around to the front of the lens and pose.

But adding a remote release to your kit opens up a number of other possibilities.

Some of these releases have cables with a length of a metre or more. They enable you to get a reasonable distance from the camera with more elaborate poses. And if you also use the self-timer, it will give you time to put the cable down and out of sight before the shutter fires.

Alternatively, you could use a wireless infra-red or radio-triggered remote release. This will allow you to get even further away from the camera – for example, if you want to take a photo of yourself admiring a landscape. Again, use this in conjunction with the self-timer so that you can slip the trigger in your pocket and pose naturally before the shutter fires.

Oh … and it’s best if you have a tripod, too, when you do this.

 

2.  Be dramatic If you’re doing the old hold-the-camera-at-arm’s length trick, then sitting and grinning at the lens is about the only option you have. Why be so boring? Self-portraiture opens up a whole world of opportunity. Gardening, for example, is normally considered a quiet and contemplative occupation. But, by using a low viewpoint, a wide angle lens, and the self-timer again – coupled with some fill-in flash to compensate for the bright sky – you can demonstrate that a worm may see gardening in a very different light …
	3.  Record life incidents You take photographs to record events in your family, don’t you? To you record birthday parties, weddings, holidays, anniversaries, and the like? So why not record your personal life too, with self portraits? Last year I broke my leg in a skiing accident. For about 6 weeks my world shrank to the house and yard. During that period I tried to record my experiences. I converted my DSLR into a pinhole camera using a camera body cap and some aluminium foil. (See how I did it on my pinhole page.) My intention was to portray a fuzzy and insubstantial feeling. To achieve the transparent effect I used a long exposure (easy with a pinhole) so that I could hobble out of the image part way through.
4.  Be creative The majority of photographs that you see of people at computers show them smiling as they gaze at the glowing screen. Happy families gather around, fascinated by the wonders it beams out at them. Oh yeah? That’s not my experience. I’m usually tearing my hair out as the thing throws up incomprehensible error messages, crashes without warning, or freezes solid (usually when I haven’t saved my work for the past 2 hours). So I decided to record my response as a self-portrait. I was entirely alone when I took this photograph. Honest. With a bit of ingenuity I managed to catch my tie flying, and get motion blur on my hand. Can you work out how I did it?

5.  Try a silhouette.

Just remember that you need to be careful with silhouettes. Keep your image clean and clear. Don’t lean against a tree, for example, as your shape will merge with that of the tree making it impossible to identify.

And try to tell a bit of a story. If you stand sideways-on against a bright window you may get a beautiful silhouette but it won’t mean an awful lot. Just another profile.

For this photograph I climbed a mountain ridge before dawn to create an image with a little ‘story’ to it. Again, I used a tripod and the self-timer.

6.  Frame yourself

This tip is not exclusive to self-portraiture. In fact, none of these tips are. But with self portraiture, posing yourself in a suitable frame can give some enigmatic results.

Here I used the self-timer set at 20 seconds, and I had to run quite fast to get inside the derelict barn before the shutter fired. Hence my expression.

7.  Don’t show your face.

Is it a ‘portrait’ if your face is hidden?

You could argue the point—and I’m sure some will—but I think it is. A portrait reveals something about somebody and, as I’m a photographer, this is one way I can portray myself.

So … good self-portraits are much, much more than arms’ length photography – even if you do have a nifty extra little screen on the front of your camera.

Why not think about it, get yourself set up and try some self-portraiture with a difference this coming weekend? And share your experiences, too. I’d love to hear them.

 

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* Also called a ‘cable release’, this piece of kit is essential for a number of other photographic techniques such as macro, low-light and landscape photography.

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