5 Tips for Self Portrait Photography in Nature:
Placing yourself in the frame is a great way to add the human element to a nature image. Its also a great way to add a sense of scale to a photograph. In this video I will give you 5 tips for shooting Self Portraits that I use in my own photography.
Points Mentioned:
- Use a shutter release to trigger the camera to shoot a timelapse. That way you can shoot as many images of yourself as you want with no “10 second timer limit”. Also use a tripod so you can position the camera anywhere you want.
- Keep the poses natural and take your time moving in the scene. Enjoy the experience and leave the camera going for a while.
- Use short shutter speeds so that the figure will not be blurry in the frames. If you are shooting at night, use long a exposure, but make sure you are standing in the pose for extra time to get a sharp image.
- Try doing a silhouette or keep the figure small to give the image a sense of “anonymity”. It allows the viewer to imagine that they could be the figure standing in the scene. it also gives scale to the other elements in the scene.
- Make sure that the figure is adding and not taking away from the composition of the photograph. Make sure the figure is not standing too close to an edge, or in an awkward spot of the photo. Be compositionally aware when placing yourself in the frame.
Here are some links to the gear mentioned in the video.
Tripods:
Shutter Releases:
(Make sure the cable is compatible with your camera, different brands and cameras use different inputs. These mentioned below are compatible with full frame Canon DSLR’s. If you use Nikon, Sony or other non full-frame DSLR’s type in Intervalometer or shutter release and make sure your camera is listed.)
http://www.amazon.com/Satechi-Control-Shutter-EOS-D2000-Compatible/dp/B0018205KE/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008FBMSWY
I hope this video helps, thank you so much for watching!
When you are shooting your self portraits, for example, “Journey to the Sea”, are you bracketing the photo? Or just creating a virtual copy of the same photo(in Lightroom) with different settings to bring back/out areas of the image?
Thanks
Hey there, I bracket exposures if there is a lot of dynamic range in the scene. I will bracket first, then I will set a well balance exposure for the timelapse and go out into the scene.
Great Tips Michael, lets practice! Great picture the one of Island and the Aurora Boreal! Cheers from Puebla Mexico!
You should really do a Timelapse tutorial. I really want to try it, but there isn’t any good tutorials out there
Self portraits in nature give an extraordinary look, but while doing this, one must be careful enough. These tips are very important and necessary to read.
Great, but how you focus on self-portraits photo? For example that shot with waterfall? Thank you for your advise
For that one, I had focused on infinity, since everything was far away. In other cases, I would focus on where I plan on standing.