Using Different Selfie Types

What is a selfie?

A selfie is a photograph that you take with yourself as the subject.

A selfie does not have to be one specific type of photo that has your whole face or your whole body or that does any one specific thing at all.

As long as you are the photographer and you’re the subject, it’s a selfie.

You get to choose what type of selfies make you feel good and what type of selfies you like to work with in your scrapbooks.

This is about your art. These are your photos and your scrapbooks. You get to decide which kinds of photos you want to include. It is incredibly important for you to include photographs of yourself in your scrapbooks. So learning how to take photographs of yourself that you love and help tell the stories that you want to tell is worth doing.

Here are a bunch of different types of selfies for you to start taking to see which ones feel right for you.

Mirror Selfie

A mirror selfie is one that you take in front of a mirror. These can be a little bit hard to get right at first, since you don’t necessarily have the advantage of seeing what’s on the screen in front of you.

My best tips for mirror selfies:

1. Look at spot in the mirror where your camera lens is, it will make it look like you’re looking at the camera.
2. Take a bunch of photos, choose the one(s) you like the best.

Front-Facing Camera Selfie

This is probably the most ‘traditional’ selfie. You take the photo by using the front-facing camera on your mobile phone, this way you can see yourself in the screen as you hit the camera shutter. It can be awkward to take, especially if you try to hold your camera out in front of your face and snap a single photo. But you have the distinct advantage of being able to see what’s on the screen before you hit the photo button (aka digital shutter).

My best tips for front-facing camera selfies:

1. Sit in front of your front-facing camera and see what faces make sense to make. Look at the screen until you see a face that you’re making that you’re happy with, then figure out how that feels on your face. I know it sounds weird, and it is going to feel super awkward at first, but I promise this will absolutely help you with your selfie faces.
2. Take a ton of photos. Use the ones you like, delete the ones you don’t. Look at it as practice. This is the art of self-photography and every photo is practice.
3. Take them in a bunch of places. Use them to capture a setting. Your background is your friend.

Shoe Selfie

I love shoe selfies. They are a very easy gateway into the selfie world. It’s more than just a photo of your shoes. It’s a representation of where you are right now. It’s a picture of where you’re standing, what you’re standing in, and what’s going on in the tiny little piece of the world you’re in. More than anything, it’s a simple statement that says you were here.

My best tips for shoe selfies:

1. Square yourself up. This is a great chance to use lines in your photograph.
2. You’re almost always going to be shooting straight down, so it’s a fun way to get things in the camera that don’t always wind up in a photo. Whether that’s the literal ground or things in a lower place.
3. This is a great way to take discreet selfies in public since the motions on your phone and with your body are not all that different from texting or playing a game on your phone.

Holding Something Selfie

Holding something selfies are another great gateway selfie. Remember that a selfie is just a photograph of yourself that you’ve taken. Holding something selfies are a great way to tell a story about something that you’re loving, doing, or just happen to be finding yourself really into at the moment.

My best tips for holding something selfies:

1. Don’t overthink it. This is about telling a story, not how you look, whether everything is perfect, etc. Just capture a moment with you in it.
2. Take these all the time. Especially when you’re out and about or when you’re doing your favorite hobbies. This is an amazing way to record your life.

There are lots of other categories of selfies that you can take: timer selfies, tripod selfies, and others — but these four are simple ones that you can start with, or add into your selfie routine today.

If you’re just getting started with your selfie routine. Check out the #Thursday3 weekly selfie challenge to get a simple and fun way to get pictures of you into your weekly routine.