How To: Take A Photo Of Yourself

The other day, I needed to take a photo of myself to put in the sidebar, directly to the right of this post.  I haven't had any pictures of me taken since fall and I look considerably different than I did then.

But there was no one here to take a photo of me, so I needed to do it myself.  I didn't want one of those photos where I'm holding the camera facing me with my arms outstretched, so I decided to do it a little differently.

I'm sure this is not news to most of you or anyone on the internet, but I thought I would share it anyway, just in case it is news to you.

It's really easy to get a decent head shot of yourself without someone else's help.  Follow these steps and you'll get a "fetching" photo of yourself in no time.

1.  Go get all dolled up.  If you're like me, you rarely apply makeup or style your hair, or wear anything but a t-shirt and yoga pants or jeans.  Head to the bathroom, apply that mascara, run a straightener through your hair or do whatever it is you do when you get ready to go to fancy restaurant.

2.  Put on something cute.  Trick:  If you're doing a head shot, you only have to look cute from the shoulders up, so don't worry about changing out of those yoga pants, just put on a cute shirt.

3.  Grab a mirror.  If you're mirror's moveable, like the one in my mom's bedroom, place it right next to or in front of a window or glass door.  This way, you can use the natural light from the outside to get a nice shot.  You should be facing the window/door when you take the picture, so there's not shadows on your face.

4.  Hold your camera with the lens looking into the mirror.  Take a photo of your mirror image.  Play around with how you want to smile, hold the camera, tilt your head, etc. until you get an image of yourself that's pretty cute.

5.  Upload your photo onto your computer and open it in some sort of photo editing software.  I'm cheap so I use paint.net or photobucket.com.  Both are free and work great.   For the photo at the right, I used paint.  Crop, play with color, contrast, and brightness levels, or make it Black and White or Sepia toned.  Play around and get it how you want.  Then save it.

 

You're done.  As long as you haven't cropped too much out of the photo, you should be able to print it out or use it as a profile photo or even in the sidebar of your own blog.

Pretty simple, huh?

Happy Creating!