Have Someone Else Take The Photo

Having someone else take your photo lets a different side of you be seen. You've probably taken a thousand selfies of yourself and they all end up looking pretty much the same. Letting another person take your photo shows how you are seen from their perspective. It might not be the prettiest photo, or it could be one of your favorite photos of all time. The point of having someone else take your photo is to go outside of the mundane and let the world see a different side of you.

Distance Makes A Difference

It makes a huge difference from being up close and personal than being a mile away. The clarity of the photo changes with the amount of distance that you want from the subject. This tip is saying to play with your distances. We naturally tend to prefer to taking either up close or far away photos. I personally prefer up close, so to challenge my photography skills I try and take more far away shots. Sometimes you will get a blurry shot. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad shot. It could easily mean that the people in the shot were moving and it was blurred movement. Those are called action shots, and they are some of my all-time favorite shots.

Sunlight Is Your Best Form Of Lighting

I always prefer to take my photos in sunlight than use a flash. The natural lighting brings out a person's color without making it seem fake. I think a better way to understand it would be comparing a photo of yourself taken without flash to a photo taken with flash. You'll notice that your skin color is not the same in both of the photos. That is why I prefer sunlight because it keeps the natural skin color of the person being photographed. There is a reason why people call the mid afternoon "the golden hour". It gives people a golden glow on their pictures. Ps. the golden hour is between 3-6 pm depending on the season. Also, never shoot in the middle of the day. The sun would be directly over you and will completely mess up how you look.

Use A Timer

There will always be moments in our life where we are either alone or surrounded by people we don't know and want to take a photo of ourself. There are two options: ask someone to take the photo of you, or take it yourself. Of course taking a typical selfie can get boring and start hurting your arm. In addition, it sometime cuts out the bigger picture. That's why I set a timer to take my photo. I get multiple shots taken. All that I want in the photograph is actually in the photograph. Best of all I don't have to rely on someone else and hope they capture what I want. Setting a timer puts me in control of the photo. This is not to say that setting a timer will make the photo taking process easier. I still end up retaking the photo to make it nicer just as I would if it were a selfie. But I do take fewer photos because of it.

Listen To Music

There has never been a time where I don't take a photo without listening to music. People naturally become more relaxed when listening to music. You might dance or sing. You might even laugh because that one song reminds you of a funny time you had with your friends. The point is it relaxes you enough that you aren't showing such a posed appearance of yourself. It shows your "natural" self. I also always play music when I am doing a photo shoot to put my subject at ease.

Choose Your Background Wisely

Most people don't think about what is behind them until after the photo has been taken. Mainly because you'll see some random guy picking his nose has he walked behind you. Most of the time you don't want someone photobombing your nice picture. Take the time to look at what is behind you and see if you can change the scenery behind you. If you are at say Disneyland and trying to take a photo in front of Cinderella's Castle, just know you are going to have people behind you because of how crowded the place is. It is inevitable. Sometimes you can change the background just by shooting from a different angle. Take my photo above for example. If I had had the person take the photo from below where I was standing, you would not be able to see all the people sitting on the steps below me. I wanted the person to take the photo from above because it clearly shows in the background how busy it is and also where I am at.