Northwest Ohio Photographers – Behind the Scenes of a Selfie

Northwest Ohio Photographers

Cynthia is an on location lifestyle and storytelling photographer serving the Toledo, Sylvania, Maumee, Holland, Perrysburg, Oregon and Northwest Ohio areas. She is available for maternity, newborn, baby, children and family portraits and documentary photo sessions.

---

The Scene

Our master bedroom is one of the smallest rooms in our home. A small space doesn’t have to hold you back in photography though. Something I like to remind my clients is that the camera only “sees” a portion of the room. Don’t be worried if you have a small or cluttered space. If there is good light, then there is always a work around. One thing that this room does have is great light. There are two small windows on walls perpendicular to each other. I actually closed the blinds in one window so there would only be one light source. I also love the deep navy walls and how they appear in photographs.

The Shot

This afternoon my little guy was being extra cuddly. When I walked into our room, he asked to be held and wouldn’t let go. I took advantage of his cuddles by setting up my tripod. I put my 50mm on so I wouldn’t have to crop in post. Since I was shooting in such a small space, I knew by using a longer focal length that would allow for myself and my guy to take center stage.

I asked M to stand in front of the camera. Don’t you love her goofy face for me? Then, I set my focus and exposure and turned on the interval timer. When I set the timer, I usually set it to take a photo every 5-10 seconds and have it take two photos for every interval. The more images you take the better. It is so much harder to know what will come out when you aren’t physically behind the camera.

You also want to be sure your f-stop isn’t wide open (the low number). For these images, I had mine set to 3.2. While that isn’t super high, it was high enough to be sure that if the focus fell elsewhere on the face it wouldn’t be super noticeable.

Also, having the mirror behind the camera really helped. I was able to see if I was posing awkwardly and will definitely use it again for selfies.

I have always wanted images like this of my children on my shoulder and usually when they were cuddling this way, it was too hard to set up the tripod. I love that I finally was able to capture this sweet moment that all my kiddos have done in such a beautiful way.

Have questions about setting up selfies with your big camera? Ask away!