How To Take A Good Selfie: 7 Tips To Consider
Part of the Kay and Kay Group's mission is to help improve the lives of our customers by making a complicated process a bit more convenient. With that, this blog post isn't focused on a product; instead it will shed some light onto what many of us consider to be a difficult process, taking the perfect selfie!
Nailing the perfect selfie isn't as easy as Kim Kardashian makes it seem (we've tried and failed on so many levels). Thus, Kay and Kay figured it would be a great idea to do some research and help all of you selfie impaired people like us master this selfie world one step at a time. Through our research we found that the key to taking an awesome selfie is to nail the best combination of light, angle, setting, and photo filters. This is easier said than done.
We consulted with selfie experts (basically, all of our friends who have thousands of followers on social media, and numerous lifestyle, celebrity and fashion blogs) to find out how to take a good selfie. Read on for 7 tips that will help you take your selfie game to the next level.
1. Lighting is Everything, and Avoid Shadows
Sounds obvious right? Most of us know that the first rule of selfie-ing is to pay attention to your lighting. You need good, natural lighting. Light is undoubtedly the best free beauty product you have! Take your selfie while facing a window with natural light. Or better yet, go outside and bask in the sun's glow. Guess what... good lighting can actually make under-eye circles and shadows totally disappear! The golden hour to shoot your selfie is during sunrise or sunset, when the light is low and the most beautiful."
2. Know When to Use Flash
While finding natural light and avoiding shadows are key tips to how to take a good selfie, there are times when you want to take a selfie and it's dark. Whether you're in the club or just on your couch watching Netflix, how do you get a great selfie in little to no light? If you don't own a Lumee case, turn to Snapchat or your phone's camera and hit that lightning bolt on the top left corner and then take your selfie. Once you save it to your camera roll, you can play with the tone to make it what you want (black and white filters are really helpful with hiding shadows).
3. Take the Picture From Up High.
Kim Kardashian suggests in addition to awesome lighting "you really have to hold the phone up high (above your head). You need to have your hand positioned to where it's as far away from you as possible and not down to up. It has to be up—facing, tilting down. That's the key."
4. Play to Your Angles
The main piece of advice we got from our interviews and research is that when it comes to selfies, keep your chin down and the camera up. We haven't met anyone who looks good when shot from under their chin. When taking a selfie, hold the phone so that the bottom of it is level with your eyes. Not everyone walks around with selfi sticks in their bags, but if you do, that's great! They work wonders and make everyone look amazing in photos.
Furthermore, you probably shouldn't stare directly into the camera. "Most people don't look their best straight-on. Turn to the side a little bit — not to the point where it's a full-on profile, but just slightly."
5. Use the Right Apps and Filters
The Aviary app for editing camera-phone photos is highly recommended. In today's world of social media, taking the perfect selfie is really important. It captures attention and will draw people to you and your page, thus, there's no shame in editing a photo of yourself before posting it to the 'Gram. Facetune is another fan favorite, allowing you to subtly blur, shape, morph, and define certain areas of your face. Don't like your under-eye bags? Blur them away! Want to whiten your teeth? Go for it. A subtle trick on Facetune is to "detail" your eyes, which makes them look bright and sparkly. Remember, what's on the Internet lives forever so why not create your very best look and present that to the world? It's still you after all, a more perfect you, but still you none the less!
6. Don't Over-Edit
Allure magazine suggests: "While we're all for editing and filtering, don't adjust your selfie to the point that it looks unnatural. When editing, use a really light touch. It's easy to get carried away. Only touch up the areas that are glaringly obvious to you — those little lines around your eyes make you look human. If you're using a filter, you also have the option to not use it at max capacity. Instead of just selecting a photo filter on Instagram, click on the filter itself (Amaro, Valencia, etc.) until a sliding bar comes up. Then you can reduce the severity of the filter, making the photo appear a little less edited."
7. Take a Lot of Selfies...and We Mean A LOT
The kings and queens of social media all advise us to "just to take a lot of selfies." Most times you have to go through a lot, just to find the perfect one.
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