YAYOM Selfies - Experimenting

Since I started the selfies e-course (YAYOM), I've been taking a lot more selfies than before.  (Note:  when I said a lot, I did't mean heaps.  I mean from 0 per week to 3 or 4 a week.  That to me was a lot!)

The e-course encouraged us to post the selfies in the private flickr group and amazingly I got very good feedback from one of my selfies.  A group member urged me to share how I did the shot.  Instead of sharing with only the group, I'm going to share it with anyone who's interested to know.

Here is the shot.

(First off, let me make it clear to you all, I have no formal or even proper photography training.  I dabbled in 35mm Photography decades ago for about 6 months.  (Even learn to develop my own photo using a friend's dark room.)  As any young person picked up interest to try out, I just dropped out after a while.


Then I took up my point and shoot digital camera about a year ago for the sake of taking pix of my sketchbook pages plus taking reference photos for drawing / painting purposes.  During the process, I found I enjoyed still photography much.  As an expansion of creative interest, I pick up selfies to try out.)

Alright back to the pix.  I think what made this photo special was the mysterious look of it.

How I did it?  Honestly, I didn't quite know.  It was one of those at a spur of moment, no planning, accidental shot.  Or you can also call it beginner's luck.  And here are something that I did which might have contributed to the look of it.

• I turned off the auto flash of the camera and relied on natural light to take the shot.
• I took the shot at my backyard at evening hour.
• Natural light quality:  The sky is still white while my surrounding are quite dark.
• I held the camera at arm's length, pointed toward myself and twirled to take the shot!
• The end result is a darkened background with pale and blurry face head shot of me! ;)
• The original shot was a tad too unclear and "ghostly".  So I used photoshop express (free download app for iPad) to pump up the saturation to bring back a tiny bit of color on my face and adjust the exposure to give it more contrast.

That's it. Do try it out and let me know if it works for you.  And if you have any further questions, email me and I'll try my best to answer.  But pls remember that I'm no professional, I'm just mucking around and learning my ways of self portrait!

Cheers and thank you for reading! xxoo