First, who am I to be giving you photography advice? I am a published photographer specializing in artistic nudes. I am the sole author of a photography textbook.
While many of you have taken excellent images of yourselves, many of you have not. To maximize your responses, you really must not only publish a photo of yourself, but it must be a good photo. It also must be relevant and not offensive. And guys I’m speaking to you, I don’t know many women who want to see a blown-up image of your dick. Naked is fine, but please not dick pics.
A very common theme I see is photos where the persons head is cut off or otherwise distorted. I understand this is designed to shield your identity. But cutting off your head, while it may shield your identity, is artistically very bad and it totally distracts from what you are trying to accomplish with the photo. There are other techniques that are more effective, and much more pleasing to the eye.
Conversely, some of you may want to show only your face and no other parts of our body. This is called a “Head Shot”. I’ve noticed that a few of you have trouble getting the entire face into the frame and you end up cropping through your chin. This is bad. Crop through the top of the head rather than the chin. This is much more pleasing to the eye.
A second problem I see is the issue of photography fundamentals. I don’t know what to say about this except know your camera well enough to make sure the subject is focused, and the shutter speed is set such that you don’t get motion blur. If you need more light to avoid motion blur, then get more light. The acceptable shutter speed varies depending on the focal length of the lens on your camera. A standard lens has a focal length of 50 mm. If you wish to shoot handheld, then you must use a shutter speed greater than 1/60 of a second. Any less, and you will likely get motion blur caused by your unsteadiness in holding the camera. If you use a tripod, you can decrease the shutter speed since the tripod holds the camera steady. Tip: if you are not going to use a remote-controlled shutter, then use the timer on the camera so that the act of pressing the shutter release doesn’t cause camera shake. Be advised that this only works if the subject is not moving. If the subject is moving, then you must use a higher shutter speed.
Proper lighting is also very important. A washed-out photo or an image that is too dark is not going to attract anyone. Make sure that the subject (you) is properly lit for the camera settings you are using.
A third problem I see is a cluttered background with everything in focus. A subset of this is a photo of you that is taken what look likes a mile away. Remember, you are the subject. You should be where the focus is, not something in the background. If you have a decent lens, you can de-focus objects in the background by using as wide an opening lens as possible (the f/stop should be as small as your lens will allow. For example, an f/stop of f/1.2 will have a very narrow depth of field, whereas an f/stop of f/22 will have everything in focus from a few feet to infinity.) You want the depth of field to be very small. You can also use composition tricks, different backgrounds, and creative lighting (make the background dark) to keep the focus on you, the subject. More on this later.
Finally, photography is all about light. If you don’t want your head to be visible, bury it in shadow—don’t crop it out of the photo. Light can be used to focus attention on those body parts you wish to show off while de-emphasizing those parts you wish to hide in shadow. By using light in this manner, very pleasing and artistic images can be achieved.
To take your photo, you can hire a professional photographer, or you can use a tripod with a camera that has a delay timer. This technique works very well, and it doesn’t involve other people. It may take a few attempts to get the right pose and centered properly. But digital bits are cheap. I should mention that it is possible to take very good photos using your smart phone. You will still need to mount it to a tripod and it will need a timer. It is also likely that it won't have the depth-of-field control that a high end camera will have, but as I've shown, there are other ways to eliminate background clutter.
I’m going to post a series of these articles that address each of these points. I will also try to post example images (from my stock developed over the years) to go with each post. I say try because I’m not sure the site will allow them. Be advised that all images are owned by me and I hold the copyright.
The attached images illustrate the points I talked about in this blog.
I hope you enjoy my articles.
