Annoucements:
This week's Selfie Saturdays theme is Full Body Shot.
{Read tips for how to shoot a full body selfie here}
Next week's Selfie Saturdays theme is Valentine's Couples Selfies
Join us at GET FIT Challenge
{Get in Shape with the support of your blog sisters}
My funny Valentine: Cutest Couple Photo Contest @ Six Cherries on Top
Title: Couples’ Insecurities
and
The Paper Mama’s: My Valentine{ I know there’s supposed to be a kid in the picture, but as far as I am concerned my sometimes immature hubby is my kid for now}
and
PaperCamera’s Valentine {Show and Tell Challenge}
Linking up with Say Hi Sunday and Sunday Snapshot
Themes are:
SHADOWS.
A selfie I took last weekend in the Everglades City
PATTERN
Another selfie, same place, same time. I had a little bit of time with nothing much to do when boys were talking and I decided to practice some self-portraiture. The wall there was really cool- it’s aactually a fountain.
BRIGHT WHITE
Another selfie.
WARMTH
STRONG
This one was pulled from my archives. I took this picture in Barbados when my husband was goofing around showing off.
Don’t forget to check out this week’s Selfie Saturdays theme: Couple’s Self Portraits.
In light of the upcoming Valentine’s Day ( and our 8th anniversary), I went ahead and changed this week’s theme from Arm’s Length Portrait to Couples Selfies. We are all photographers, some amateur, others professional, so we ought to be able to take our own couples photos, right? And what’s a better time to do that than the Valentine’s week?
The toughest part of taking selfies of ourselves and our hubbies is that hubbies come in two sizes: uncooperative and completely uncooperative. It’s practicallyimpossible to get our loved ones in the picture, let alone make sure that you have enough time to set up a tripod and work with the focus or use the timer. So I say: “Girls, take this opportunity and talk your boys into a couples photoshoot under the pretense of it being Valentine’s Day!”
Again, if you have a remote and a tripod, you’re already ahead of the curve. If you don’t have one, I recommend this Canon Wireless Remote 
and this tripod 
Get your loved one to commit to at least an hour of unlimited pictures, so that he wouldn’t complain and wonder if it’s the last one.
Shooting a couples selfie is a lot different than shooting another couple as a photographer. You can tell them how to pose, you can frame it however you want and at least your clients follow your directions. Here, you are limited. So stick to some basic ideas and locations the first time. Now the possibilitiesare endless: around the house, in your yard, at the beach, in the snow, in a park. Just make sure to stick with one location, because as we all know hubbies don’t last too long when there are pictures involved. So make it short and sweet.
Now that location is picked out, start with one type of shots, so that you didn’t spend too much time moving the tripod and boring your husband, because you’ll spend enough time running back and forth from the tripod as it is. If you don’t own a tripod yet, find an area in your house where you can prop the camera ( chair, table, counter top). Don’t worry much about framing or keeping the camera straight, you can always crop and straighten in post processing.
The greatest part of taking a selfie with your husbands/boyfriends is that you finally have a stand-in for your focus if you’re using manual focus or the camera’s timer. That saves a lot of time and headache. Simply position your guy where you two need to be and focus.
Learning how to take couples selfies really comes in handy when you travel, and on family holidays and birthdays and anniversaries. Who here has ever come back from a trip only to find that they have no photos with both you and your guy in it ( arms length don’t count) ?
So here are a few ideas for you new project:
{all photos below are self portraits}
1. Pose around the house
2. Utilize your outdoor space
3. Use costumes
4. Get Fancy
6. Have some fun
7. Kiss away
(our first Valentine’s Day selfie)
8. Be spontaneous.
If you find yourself in a cool looking place, find the nearest trash can and snap away ( taken on a side street in Universal with the camera propped up on a trash can)
9. Use the power of sun: silhouettes and flares and backlighting.
Set your shot against the sun and watch the magic happen.
10. Don’t be afraid to get down and dirty.
11. Spice up the same ol’ boring shot with a bit of a tilt. Set your tripod at a random angle
12. Don’t discard overexposed, poorly framed shots.
Sometimes those can be saved with B&W and a good crop. You can’t be too picky when you’re shooting selfies.
12. Jump! Jump! Jump!
13. Close ups.
Don’t forget to zoom in and come a little closer. Close ups can be great when the location is questionable. It’s easy to focus on a close up, so keep your aperture low and your smiles big.
15. It’s all about LOVE
It’s easy to get so focused on the getting the right shot that you forget to pose. Look in each other’s eyes. Remember it’s all about you two.
16. Imitate your favorite photographers.
(Bruce Weber , the guy that shoots Abercrombie black and white stuff)
18. Be natural.
Some of the coolest photos taken tend to be spontanous and candid. Well, it’s pretty difficult to be spontanious when you’re the one pressing the remote button. So after you’ve done your posed shots, try doing some “posed to look candid” shots.
Ok, I think I’ve given you enough inspiration! I can’t wait to see what you come up with yourselves. I know you have been waiting to take your couples photos, but never had the chance. So this is it! You will thank me for making you do this later 
LINK UP BELOW! IT WILL BE OPEN TILL NEXT SATURDAY!
FOR YOUR FULL BODY SHOT LINK UP, SEE THIS POST
NEXT WEEK’S THEME IS ARM’S LENGTH SELFIE.
That time has come! The one you’ve been dreading!
Haha just kidding! It’ll be fun!
GET FIT Challenge members are also participating with their first full body shot to indicate a starting point in their fitness program, so let’s give them some encouragement {insert clapping here}
So there’s a very good reason for why I am posting early. I decided that it was too confusing to have a tutorial for the next week but a link up from the previous week in one post. Silly me! I don’t know what I was thinking. So now I am changing to the traditional format. That is : Tutorial and Link up for the following week’s project. So in order to do that, i need to catch up.
This post will serve as a link up for our full body shots. And tomorrow I will have a tutorial up for the following week’s theme, along with a linky that will be open all week.
Now, if you’re new here, our scheduled themes are as follows:
Week 1: Our Dream Self
Week 2: Basic Full Body Shot
Week 3: Arm’s Length Selfie
Week 4: Portrait Selfie + Squinty Model Eyes
Week 5: Incorporating an Idea into a Selfie
Week 6: Focus Pocus
Week 7: Me Myself and I: Multiplicity
Week 8: Magic Tricks
Week 9: Anonymous: Shooting Body Parts 
Week 10: Jump Shots
I reserve the right to change them around, and as a matter of fact this is what I’ll be doing this week. Instead of Arm’s Length Selfie ( which will come next week and I am very excited to talk about), we’ll be doing Couples Selfies in light of our most favorite Valentines Day. {which also happens to be our 8th anniversary} I hope you all join me this week and continue learning and practicing.
Now, onto the challenge on hand: FULL BODY SHOT.
I know it wasn’t a glamorous topic, nor was it creative or fun. However, it was a way to get out of our “I don’t take self-portraits” box and try our hand at something very basic. The simple poses were there to help you present your body in the best possible light and many of you have used them VERY successfully. BTW, I never mentioned it but those poses are awesome when you take group pictures of your friends, too. It’s not for self-portraits only, but just simple poses that make you look a bit better (see right)
One common mistake I noticed is the whole “hands on hips” pose. It’s a great pose if done correctly, however your hands should NOT land on your waist or behind your hips. They should be directly on your hip bone, slightly in front of you. Yur elbows can be tilted ack or forward depending on the pose, but your hand should always be upfront. Right where your body curve starts. For some people it might be lower than for me ( if your curve starts at your lower hip), but the goal is to smooth that curve and accentuate your waist to hip ratio ( which is what makes a woman so attractive)
So grab our Selfie Saturdays button on the sidebar, link up your awesome full body shots, and don’t forget to come back tomorrow to read about how to take Couples Selfies and submit your own from Valentines day. {I will pick out one or two most successful self portraits to showcase on my blog once in a while}
My full body shot can be found on my personal blog “The Art of Making a Baby”
So since I started this whole Self Portraiture oriented blog and Selfie Saturdays linky, I’ve been telling myself that now I need to perform and start taking more self-portraits again. I used to be really into it ( and eventually I’ll post stuff I’ve done in the past), but then life intervened and I found it easier to use my finally trained and practiced hubby rather than taking the challenge and shooting a self-portrait.
But if you talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk.
So this weekend when we went out on a yacht outing to Everglades City with friends and I found a chunk of time that I really had nothing to do with. The boys were talking and I thought to myself: “It’s a beautiful day and a beautiful place, why not practice my self-portrait skills now?”
See, the hardest thing in self-portrature is being able to let go and not care about what people will think about you. It comes handy when you don’t look perfect on the pictures, and it also helps when you have to do them in public. Well, we were in a very upscale resort, and I said: “Screw it! I’m just gonna shoot”. There were looks and there were smiles, and questions whether it’s a magazine shoot ( Seriously? You think anyone shoots editorials all by themselves? Looking as ragged as I was (my hair screamed “day on a boat)? )
I got a few really nice shots to be honest and left very content with myself. I also got my hubby to pose with me and we got a few couple shots that I’ll post later. The toughest thing was always the focus and I will be talking about focusing very soon, so starting following the Selfie Saturdays posts, if you’re interested.
So here’s one of the shots from that day.
Shot with a remote, without a tripod, set up, posed and executed by me. I set the camera up on a high table, focused on the part of teh chair where I knew I was going to be sitting. Using auto focus wasn’t an option since there is that extra chair in the foreground and I wanted to keep it natural like that. There was a lot of back and forth between the chair and the camera until I got the focus 100% right.
Also I was shooting with my 50mm, so framing was going to be done in post processing, though in this case I didn’t need to crop that much out.
If you like this, and want to try your hand at self-portraits, join us at Selfie Saturdays every week. This week’s challenge is “Our Dream Self” which is an old selfie representing what you want to look/feel like. Next week’s submission that we’re currently shooting will be a Full Body Shot, tips for which you can find here.
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If you need to get in shape before shooting self-portraits ( though you can do those at any weight and fitness level 
), join me and {Shutter}Mama at GET FIT Challenge.
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Linking up with
Sometimes, I feel I live on some tropical exotic island. It doesn’t seem like good ol’ USA can be so breathtaking, island-y and gorgeous. We had a really nice boating/resort party over the weekend and I will be posting more shots from that day on my personal blog, The Art of Making a Baby, as well as here.
{Below- not a selfie} – just FYI, unless you count setting up the shot but having someone else hold the camera and press the shutter a selfie. Don’t forget to join me next Saturday for more tips on how to take self-portrats and a full body shot link up.
Don’t forget to participate in the next week’s Self Portrait linky, Selfie Saturdays. The theme is Full Body Shot, with tips here
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Linking up with
I am excited to host my first Selfie Saturday linky. This week’s theme is in conjunction with our new GET FIT Challenge, “OUR DREAM SELF”. The goal is to post a past self-portrait, which will serve as sort of an introduction of participants. For those who are taking part in GET FIT challenge (if you aren’t, it’s a good idea to join), OUR DREAM SELF represents their goal of what they want to look like, and serves as motivation to work hard.
If you’ve ever taken a self-portrait, go ahead and link up with it.
If you’re new to self-portraiture, I encourage you to participate every week, since I’ll be covering various topics of shooting self-portraits. Every week i will be posting tips and/or tutorials based on the next week’s challenge. Following the weekly themes is encouraged but not mandatory. If you feel like taking a different type self-portrait, go with it! As long as it’s of you and taken by you, you can participate and link up.
Here’s the schedule of weekly themes:
Week 1: Our Dream Self
Week 2: Basic Full Body Shot
Week 3: Arm’s Length Selfie
Week 4: Portrait Selfie + Squinty Model Eyes
Week 5: Incorporating an Idea into a Selfie
Week 6: Focus Pocus
Week 7: Me Myself and I: Multiplicity
Week 8: Magic Tricks:
Week 9: Anonymous: Shooting Body Parts
Since this is WEEK 1, I’d like to cover the basics: taking a simple full body shot. Most of you are already aware of these aspects, however, some of you, who are not used to shooting “blind”, might find these obvious but useful.
To make your life easier taking selfies, you will need a tripod and a remote. However, it is quite possible to go without. In fact, my first self-portraits were done using the built in timer and propping the camera on top of a TV.
Now, once you have your tripod, it’s important to position it right. You might be familiar with angles and framing while shooting other people, because you get to see exactly what it looks like, but with self-portraiture it’s a bit trickier, especially if you’re trying to catch a more flattering angle of yourself.
The key is to set up the tripod at the right height, not too high, not too low. That position varies, but it should be somewhere around the height of you stomach. If you set it up too high, you end up looking UP at the camera and all of a sudden you’ll find yourself with short fat legs. If you position the camera too low, your ass will grow double in size. There are times, however, when you might want to raise the tripod or lower it. If you have small hips but want to look taller- go low. If you have a wide butt, go higher.
I realize that my examples relatively look the same, however, if you happen to have a heavier frame, the difference is much more noticeable.
The same goes for your stance. Many of us don’t realize how we hold our bodies, and when we don’t have the viewfinder to correct our pose, we might just make ourselves look a lot weirder or more unattractive than we really are. Tha being said, straighten your back and take your left hand away from your face! ( see I told you we don’t really pay attention to our posture!).
Stand really straight! Now relax your body! That should be your normal flattering full body pose. Don’t push your hips forward like a pregnant lady with weak back and ab muscles, and don’t stick your butt out, unless you’re trying to achieve that specific look ( or want your tush to appear smaller). I know this is a given, but you’ll be surprised at how you stand when there’s no mirror to check yourself in.
Now onto the poses! There are a ton of different poses that you can use to take a full body self-portrait shot. Try being flirty, move your body sideways, do a side glance, criss-cross your legs, hand on the hip….
Just remember, the last thing you should do is take a picture with your legs too far apart ( no more than a few inches). Be mindful of what you’re wearing too. Your goal is to create definition and an attractive body shape. All you need for that is to make your legs look long and lean and to emphasise your waist via poses.
Here are some of your basic cute and flattering poses for a full body shot ( like when taking a picture of your outfit).
The breakdown
1.That’s a basic! But instead of just putting your hands on your hips, criss-cross your legs and push your hip out ( to emphasize the difference between your hips and waist, creating an hour glass figure, visually)
2. A side pose. That one is always great to slim your down. When my hubby was heavy, I’d always instruct him to stand slightly sideways. The hand on the hip adds to the body shape and the crossed leg behind gives your pose a little bit of flirt.
3. Same as before but straight on with the leg crossed in front ( won’t work for all body types)
4. Standard hands on hips with a knee bent to give an illusion of slim legs. This pose is perfect for girls who have sort of a boyish figure since the hands and the bent knee add “volume” to the hips making the waist look smaller.
5. The classic “I’m just hanging here against the wall, minding my own business” pose. Really easy: find a wall, lean back on it, look to the side, stick one knee out, stretch your toes and voila!
6.The “come hither” pose. It’s a mix of #3 and #4 with shoulders back and chest out.
7.Use the props. Or in my case the wall. There are plenty of ways you can play with the wall on a full body shot. I didn’t want to get into it, so here’s the most obvious one.
8.My favorite: the “I’m too sexy for my shirt” pose . This one is used a lot in lookbooks and catalogs advertising clothing, as well as bloggers showing their outfits. Pastor’s Girl Ponderings uses variations of this pose a lot and I love her for it.
Hey, try them all out, and figure out the best one for your body type. It’ll be fun to see how it turned out for you and which one became your favorite! Remember, always try to add definition to your body by using contrasting objects/clothes/body parts to make you look more “hourglassy”.
The final thing I’d like to talk about is elongating yourself. When you take photos, try standing on your tip toes. That makes your legs look long and lean. I’m 5’11″, so it’s hard to see it in my photo example, but even with my height lifting myself on tippy-toes visually makes me look leaner than when I’m standing flat on the ground. If you have problems balancing yourself while on tip-toes, wear heels instead, even if they won’t be visible in the picture.
Well, it’s your turn now! Do your full body selfies and link up with your images next Saturday, when I’ll be talking about taking Arm’s length portraits that don’t look like arm’s length self-portraits.
Don’t forget to display the Selfie Saturdays buttons ( code on the sidebar)!
Oh and one last tip before you get started, keep in mind that if you’re shooting in Auto focus mode, the camera will almost always focus on the stretched out hand with the remote, so keep your remote down low and at your face level, so that your face would be the one to be caught in the auto focus. If you’re using the camera’s built-in timer, position an object or a person in the same exact place where you’ll be standing when pressing the button or focusing in manual mode.
Blog Hopping today with
Saturday Stalk Savings Blog Hop
Surfing Saturdays
Yellow happens to be one of my favorite colors.
As soon as I saw Yellow as a challenge, I instantly thought of this image from Ecuador. This is for you, Angel!
Are you people ready for tomorrow’s challenge? I better see you there. There will tips on how to shoot self portraits on this blog, as well as heathy eating and fitness tips on Sonya’s and my personal blog.
Also Linking up with:
This Life is Sweet
And the She snapped
Give me a Shot and Photo Story Friday
When we were returning home from Colorado, we were greeted by the most amazing afternoon/early evening light, complete with that eerie reddish color and a full double rainbow ( Yes, I said it!). It was a perfect SOOC photo. I really didn’t need to Post Process it and to be honest I like the original better.
What I learned:
I learned that I absolutely love where I live. I love the fresh morning area, I love the eternally green grass, I love the tall tropical palms lining the streets, I love the warm summer rains and the liquid sunshine it produces, I love the humidity in the area, i love Florida sunsets and gorgeous evening colors, I love full sky double rainbows. I love everything about Naples and I would never want to live anywhere else.
Linked up with Creative Exchange
Since I only had my 50mm with me, I couldn’t take the full picture, so i used my IPhone app called 360 to do a panoramic shot. Excuse the iPhone quality.
When my friend Leeka came to visit, I borrowed her fish eye lens and spent what was probably the most exciting 2 days of photography ever. Do you know how freaking cool it is to be walking around Universal Studios with a fish eye? Dr. Seuss land has never looks so squiggly ( and it’s pretty squiggly as it is). My favorite shots (besides all of them) were the ones taken on the One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish ride that has little cute Dr. Seussy fishes in what looks like an aquarium. The fish eye just added to that effect.
Photo taken by AJ(hubby), edited by me.
YOU Capture RED.
Red is one of my favorite colors! I have a special folder in my Lightroom library dedicated to red photos. My this one is just so valentin-y. Btw, our wedding anniversary is Valentine’s Day. The little red Swarovski heart is one of the random gifts from my husband. The moment I saw in in a magazine, I knew I had to have it.
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BLOG HOPS
Introducing Selfie Saturdays in Conjunction with GET FIT Challenge!
I have been thinking about hosting a weekly self-portrait challenge for a quite a while now and finally the time has come. Too many talented photographer are seemingly inept at taking pictures of themselves. They either have no idea how to do it and where to start, or do not like pictures of themselves ( see GET FIT Challenge if that’s you), or never find time for the set up required to take self portraits.
Time has come to develop that skill!
We are all beautiful and we all deserve to be featured and shown. The key is to feel confident and know how to take pictures of yourself.
You won’t need anything fancy in the beginning but it would hurt to buy a tripod and a camera remote if you don’t have one.
To be honest it wouldn’t hurt to buy two or three remotes, since I seem to be loosing them all the time. This is my favorite remote to use and it will save you a LOT of time running back and forth from the camera to your “spot”. However, if you can’t/don’t want to buy it, don’t sweat it. There are plenty of ways of capturing oneself without all the fancy gadgets ( it’s just the gadgets make it so damn easy).
So every Saturday i will be writing about taking self portraits and setting a theme for the next week. You’re welcome to use the suggested theme or use your own, but the photograph has to be taken by you and have You in it ( a finger doesn’t count, we’re trying to get out of our comfort zones,remember?)
This coming up Saturday, the theme is “OUR DREAM SELF” and is a part of a bigger GET FIT challenge, {shutter}mama and The Art of Making a Baby (me) is championing. All you need to do is to post a Self-Portrait you’ve taken before that represents what you want to look/feel like. It’s about our body image and our bodies. You’re not required to join the GET FIT challenge to participate in self-portraits challenge and visa versa.
The post and the linky will go up on Saturday, so I better see you there “shaking that ass…shaking that ass” ( oh wait… that’s a song..never mind)
DON’T FORGET TO GRAB A BUTTON (code on the sidebar)
Hi, My name is Elena and I am a photoholic! 
