by Sara Tasker
After she was born, my focus shifted. Here was this tiny miraculous being who seemed to change by the minute – it felt far more important to document this evolution, lest I forget a single second of it. There was seldom time to primp myself to those old photoshoot standards, and nobody to hold the baby if I posed and my husband snapped. Self-portraiture dropped off my photographic radar completely.
I’ve no regrets about this save for one: there are almost no images of me with my child for the first two years of her life.
Isn’t that ironic? In my determination to document her world, I neglected to shoot what was arguably the single most important element of her daily life: her mother!
I’ve made a conscious effort to change this now, but there are still times when we inadvertently stay hidden behind the lens.
A family party, a special occasion, a wedding or vacation – it’s all too easy to get so swept up in the shooting that we forget to include ourselves.
What we’re left with is an invisible narrator – a ghost of ourselves in the visual story of our life.
CONNECTING WITH PEOPLE
Next time you’re browsing your Instagram favourites, pay attention to what you see of them. Do they feature in their profile image? Are they prominent in their gallery images, or perhaps talking to the camera in Stories? Or conversely, do you have almost no idea what they look like?
As humans we’re hard wired to look for faces. Right from birth we have just enough vision to see and recognize another human face – usually that of a caregiver smiling over us at close range. We know that offline, facial expressions and body language are considered valuable sources of information – how many of us hate talking on the phone because all this non-verbal communication is stripped away? Or rely on emojis to replace our own faces in online exchanges? Even babies just a few weeks in age have been shown to understand and react to an adult’s facial expressions of happiness or unhappiness.
Meanwhile, a fascinating study from Canada (Bakhshi, Shamma & Gilbert, 2014) indicates photographs with faces attract around 38 per cent more likes online, regardless of age or gender.
It’s clear that seeing faces and the physical form of other people is important for most of us when it comes to building connections and relationships – and that makes sense online just as much as it does face-to-face.
Instagram profiles and social media personas that never show the human behind the camera have a tendency to feel remote, stand-offish and a little cold. If our work is wonderful enough then of course we can still grow a following, but it will often be harder to make meaningful connections, gain trust from others and have people relate to who we are. Not because anybody is judging us for it, but simply because it’s how humans are wired to operate.
OWNING OUR OWN IMAGE
The third and final reason I encourage everyone to take photographs of themselves is because it can be so healing and empowering. Perhaps you’ve always been told you’re not special, or that exploring your appearance is vanity and shameful. Perhaps your body or face has changed since you were younger, and you’ve not yet made peace with how you look now. Perhaps you’re simply shy, or were bullied, or any number of other reasons I could list.
It doesn’t matter really, because the solution is the same. Pick up a camera and shoot.
When we take pictures of ourselves, by ourselves and for ourselves, magic can start to happen. We can learn what we like about ourselves, and how and when we look our best. We can work out the poses and angles that most flatter us in images, and choose to pull these out of the bag in nerve-racking photo situations. Over time, we can reprogramme the way we see ourselves and the story we tell in our heads when it comes to ourselves, our image and photography. And best of all, we can gently dip our toes into sharing that image of ourselves with a wider world, and access the incredible healing power of acceptance and love from the Instagram community.
EXERCISE
Ways to make it work for you
1. Do it alone. If you’re at all nervous about self-portraiture, set aside some time to shoot when it is just you, with nobody to watch you at work.
2. Take hundreds of photographs. Take full advantage of digital photography’s biggest perk and shoot unlimited shots of yourself. Delete what you hate, and examine what you don’t. What can you repeat for your next hundred photos?
3. Get creative. Self-portraiture doesn’t have to mean a smiling selfie or pose. Dig into your creativity to make something unique and reflective of you as a whole, and not just as a two-dimensional figure. I’ve done self-portrait series around my love of Star Wars, fairytales and even snow, which have all helped me feel less self-conscious and more like my body was part of a larger story or scene. Likewise, don’t feel like you have to show all of your face or body for it to count. Just slipping in your hands, feet, hair or part of your face can give people a sense of the human behind the images, and a better understanding of who you are.
4. Study how others do it. Start collecting portraits that appeal to you, and think about why you like them. It’s seldom about what the person looks like or how beautiful they are. Instead, it’s about lighting, mood and story. All the mainstays of what we aim to do as Instagram photographers, and the things we are learning together in this book!
One creative I worked with felt nervous about showing her hands, as she said she felt hers looked older than those usually seen on Instagram. My response was, all the more reason to include yours! There are, of course, millions of women with older-looking hands using Instagram, so why on earth aren’t we seeing them more? As well as increasing the diversity of bodies we see, it’s a shining beacon to all the other people out there thinking similar thoughts. As someone who can never keep nail polish neat for more than an hour, I relate far less to images of perfectly manicured hands, and feel better seeing ones that look more like my own.
USING A SELF-TIMER AND TRIPOD
Anyone with a simple smartphone or camera can start taking self-portraits right away. Most cameras and camera apps come with a build in self-timer mode – this gives you a delay between hitting the button and the shutter releasing on the shot, giving you a chance to run into frame and get ready for your picture.
If your camera has the option, opt for a ‘burst’ or ‘rapid fire’ shot of images, which allows you to move as it is shooting and avoid awkward mid-blinks or changes in expression.
Bendy-legged, flexible tripods are available cheaply online for most lightweight cameras and smartphones, and are handy for attaching to light fittings, banisters, tree branches and other unusual mounts.
TIP
There are heaps of videos on YouTube from models sharing how they pose and look their best in photographs. Nobody looks good in pictures all the time by accident – it’s a learned skill that anyone can master!
GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR PHONE CAMERA
Even if you’re a devoted DSLR user, I firmly believe you should know your smartphone camera well, too. There will always be times when we need to snap something quickly, and understanding the simple but powerful options offered by a camera phone can be the difference between making or breaking a shot. This is how I make the most out of my smartphone, wherever I am.
RECOMMENDED SETTINGS
Make sure your phone is always set up and ready to go. Mine is always set up so that the flash is turned off (it’s too bright and creates ugly shadows), the grid lines are turned on and no built-in presets are activated.
QUICK ACCESS
Practise opening your phone’s native camera from the lock screen – it should be possible without having to enter your passcode or otherwise unlock it.
Once you do it enough it will enter your muscle memory, like driving a car, so you can flip the camera open rapidly without thinking. Those precious few seconds can make all the difference when you see something unfolding. I’ll never forget the deer lying in the bluebells I missed because I was too slow fumbling to get my camera out!
MANUAL CONTROLS
Smartphone cameras have pretty reliable auto modes, but we can get more control by setting our focus (what the camera is ‘looking’ at) and exposure (how much of the light it ‘sees’). For most phones you can simply tap the subject on your screen, and a box will appear: everything within this area will be in focus and properly exposed, meaning it is bright, visible and sharp. Setting different areas of the scene as your focal point will give different results, especially if there’s a lot of contrast in your image – highlighting dark areas will brighten the whole image, and tapping on the bright spots brings the rest into shadow. If you’d like even more control, look into camera applications that allow you to set focus and exposure in different points in your app store.
EXPOSURE & FOCUS LOCK
An underused function on iPhones and other smartphone cameras, AE/AF lock allows you to set the exposure and focus onto your focal point and override the camera’s attempts to auto adjust. Simply tap and hold your finger over the focal point for a second or two to trigger ‘AE/AF lock’, which locks in the current setting until you tap the screen again.
BURST MODE
Burst or rapid fire mode is useful in a range of conditions – especially whenever a subject is moving. Turn it on – usually by holding down the on-screen shutter while taking a picture – to take a rapid succession of photographs without needing to adjust your exposure or focus.
A standard rate for phone cameras is around ten frames or photographs per second – much faster than you could ever manually hit the shutter release. This is perfect for kids, pets, wildlife and self-portraits – anywhere you need to shoot fast to get the killer shot.
HDR
In HDR or ‘High Dynamic Range’ mode your camera will process your images slightly differently. It’s designed to be used when you’re shooting a high-contrast scene, such as a bright window scene in a darkened room or a landscape against a bright sky. HDR aims to capture more detail and colour in both areas by taking a range of photographs at different exposures, and automatically combining the best parts of each. Like any automated process the results are variable, so it’s best to take your own manually exposed image as well and see which you prefer. Alternatively, on most devices you can set HDR mode to automatically save your ‘normal’ image as well whenever it’s used.
RAW
More recently, some smartphones have begun to introduce RAW file format for photographs. When you shoot RAW, you essentially block your phone’s internal processor from taking its usual steps and making adjustments to images, giving you instead a literally ‘raw’, unprocessed result. The advantage is that this can offer greater control when editing exposure, colour and other variables in post-production, but the file sizes are significantly bigger, and will take up more space. You’ll need to download an additional app to shoot RAW on your smartphone – search your app store for the top-rated RAW camera apps.
SHUTTER RELEASE
Your smartphone has an in-built range of options for triggering the shutter, beyond the big round button on the screen. As well as the self-timer, you can use both the up and down volume controls on the side of your phone, or your handsfree headphones to trigger the shutter (on Android you may need to change your camera app settings to do so). This can be useful when you need a little more distance, or are trying to reduce camera-shake – you can even hold it down to take a burst. Alternatively, if you have a tablet or second handset (or can borrow one from a housemate or friend), then there are a range of apps available that will allow you to use that device as a Bluetooth remote. If you don’t have a tripod to hand, there’s a ton of ways to place your phone for self-timed shots. An empty water glass, masking tape, Blu Tack or propping up against objects - as long as it’s steady, static and safe, it will work!
MANUAL APPS
Additional third-party apps can give you more distinct control over your phone camera settings, including separate points for focus and exposure, long exposure simulation, RAW files and more. The technology is always evolving, but I like Camera+ and Manual for playing with these features on iPhone.
GETTING OFF AUTO MODE ON YOUR DSLR
If you feel like you’ve got ‘all the gear and no idea’ when it comes to your photography, you’re not alone – it’s one of the most common things I hear from budding photographers online. The learning curve from point-and-shoot to DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) is steep and often baffling, and many of us invest in better technology only to find ourselves flummoxed and frustrated and reduced to shooting on auto mode all the time.
There’s nothing wrong with that, of course – if you’re taking the pictures you want, and are happy with this, then by all means continue. However, if you’re itching to understand more, here are a few quick-start tips to get you feeling a little more confident with your camera.
PICK A LENS
A great tip my photographer friend James Melia taught me is when you’re learning, pick one prime (non-zoom) lens and stick with it for a year or two. It can sound restrictive, but learning one lens really well allows you to understand distances, aperture and depth of field in a much more intuitive way than if you’re constantly switching around. The lens I most frequently leave on my camera is a 35mm f2, which is great for documentary-style imagery, detail shots and creating a soft and moody shallow depth of field.
SHUTTER SPEED, APERTURE AND ISO
They sound scary and baffling (not least because the numerical values are totally counter-intuitive), but shutter speed, aperture and ISO (image sensor sensitivity) are in fact simple to play with and grasp. If you’re a total beginner and feel daunted, watch a few YouTube tutorials explaining the basics, then go out and shoot with your camera to experience the differences in settings for yourself. Many photographers don’t think in numbers when it comes to imagery anyway, and simply know that they need to ‘turn that dial left’ if an image is too dark or too light. Learning your camera by feel is a completely acceptable and professional way to work.
SHOOT ON LIVE VIEW MODE
If your camera has a back view screen with a ‘live view’ option, use this in tricky lighting conditions to preview your settings before you shoot. What you’ll see on the screen is literally a live preview of the shot you will get with the current settings, making it easy to see when you need to dial something up or down before you begin to shoot. If you’re used to composing on a smartphone screen, this can feel a bit more intuitive, and help you find your way around the camera in the early days.
ADJUST TO MATCH THE AUTO VALUES
Another way to figure out what to set your values to is to take a picture on auto mode and see what the camera sets to by default. Then, switch into manual mode and programme in these same settings, then play around moving them up and down to get your desired result. Just the act of programming in the relevant values is a great way to get more familiar with the camera, and you’ll quickly begin to see how the numbers differ in different kinds of light and settings.
TRY AV MODE
Most cameras offer an ‘aperture priority mode’, which is sort of a partial auto setting. Manually set your desired aperture, and the shutter speed and ISO will be calculated for you automatically by the camera to get the best shot. Again, pay attention to the values used in these shots to really understand the dynamic between shutter speed, ISO and aperture.
EDIT ON YOUR PHONE
If you’re already wrestling with the learning curve of your DSLR, adding in the brilliant but often daunting power of software like Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop can feel like a step too far. I edit all my images for Instagram using the mobile apps covered shown here.
To get the images from your camera to your phone:
• Check if your DSLR offers wifi or Bluetooth connectivity. Most modern ones do.
• Look into buying a wifi memory card that can provide this function for you.
• Upload the images to your computer as usual and share via a service like Dropbox or Adobe Cloud to your phone.
EXE
RCISE
Put it all together
For this exercise we’re just going to take a simple, still-life image.
1. Find something to photograph that is true and honest for you. Something like a single flower or stem of leaves in a vase, a fresh pot of coffee with a cup or an obliging pet cat, perhaps. Try to choose something short-lived or animated, like these suggestions, instead of a simple static object: it makes more sense to photograph something that is temporary and changeable, because it won’t be around for as long.
2. Find your light. Look for a surface like a tabletop, window ledge or the seat of a chair or stool, in a space with light that appeals to and interests you. If it’s a sunny day, see if you can find somewhere the light is making patterns or shadows that you might want to play with. If it’s cloudier, head closer to the windows to get the best light.
3. Take a picture, as you usually would, for a comparison point.
4. Now, apply what we’ve learned. Place your object in the middle of your shot, and use your grid lines to make sure it’s centred and balanced. Check that the horizontal grid line runs parallel to the table surface, and that your phone or camera is facing straight and not turning to one side or another. If your phone or camera has it, make sure the yellow and white centre crosses line up. Make sure you’ve set your exposure for the brightest parts of the scene. Snap.