How To Take A Perfect Selfie

“Selfie, selfie, selfie”. These days, it’s all about SELFIES. Even if someone offers to take the photo for you, you’ll refuse because you’re going for “the selfie effect”. The good thing about a selfie, is you control the lighting, angle, background and can take the photo exactly the way you want it, yet sometimes selfies can go horribly wrong with overexposed light, pixelated photos and too much cleavage making it less “selfie” and more “skanky”. Here are some tips to keep in mind whilst snapping away.

1. Best way to hold the phone: Extend your arm as far as you can, extreme close ups can be a bit much. Find the easiest way to hold your phone and click the button so your hand doesn’t shake and take a blurry picture.

2. Make sure you clean your camera: This is an amateur selfie mistake, always clean the camera with your t-shirt or sunglass cleaner.

3. Lighting: Try to have the light hitting your face, avoid direct/harsh sunlight and never have overly bright backgrounds that will wash out/pixelate the photo.

4. Angle: Try to take the photo level slightly higher than your eye level, never from below or far above to avoid unflattering angles.

5. Edit: Whichever editing program you use, keep it natural. Do not over edit or put on strange filters that make your skin look orange, no one thinks that looks good. Natural beauty is in.

6. Shoot in square: If you are taking the photo for Instagram take it in “square mode” so you don’t end up having to crop your face. If you don’t remember to use square you can just use the “Squareready” app.

7. Composition: When it’s just yourself in the photo you can get creative with the composition, however when there is more than one person in the shot, try to have each person’s eyes at the same level and put your heads together (even if it feels a bit awkward).

8. Avoid skanky poses: Keep your tongue in your mouth, and the photo should only include a tasteful and classy amount of cleavage, if any, we want to see mostly your beautiful face : )

9. Multiple shots: Sometimes is takes more than one shot to get your favorite so don’t feel shy in doing your own mini photo shoot, everybody’s doing it. ; )

10. How often to post selfies: We love selfies, but try to keep it to a 1/5 ratio minimum.

– Natasha Oakley