How to take your own pretty-darn-good profile pic using just an iPhone

Before I get rolling on today's post, let me simply say...Ran-go. Pixar is my first and only true love (for my post on what kind of love, click here) but I called Rango as this year's winner, my over-sized plastic cup of movie-theater pop still in hand, the minute the credits rolled. Chuh.

Anyhow, on to my own work of significantly less critical merit: How to take your own profile pic using an iPhone.

My husband, my lone follower on Instagram, (you can join him on Instagram @cuteanduseful) commented on this photo, "Beautiful picture." This is a biased opinion but apparently not completely because on this photo...

...he said nothing.

So, with the Academy Awards complete, here's your chance to act! Try to look natural, think of something happy or funny, and above all be yourself. Now, onward! 

Get ready

• Download Instagram app on your iPhone. Follow "cuteanduseful" on Instagram (optional).
• Fix yourself up a little.
• Hang white bedsheet over shower rod
• If you have a window in the bathroom, position yourself next to it with the light shining on the side of your face. You might want to cover the window with white paper to soften the light (colored paper might also be cool). If the light is still too harsh, move away from the window a bit.

Make photo

• Kneel on the floor and hold the iPhone out so that it is slightly pointing down at you. 
  • I read somewhere that portriats look better if the camera is angling down a little. Maybe this is because of nostrils. 
  • Kneeling on the floor prevents the ceiling or the space above the shower rod (in short, anything not covered by the white sheet) from getting into the photo.
• Flip the view so you can see yourself, and frame the shot. Look at everything that will be in the frame. Take into account that Instagram photos end up square. 
• Look at the camera, sort of. When you snap the picture, do not look directly at the phone, focus on something just a little beside and behind the phone. I also held the camera out a little to the side. Play around with holding it to the left and right side, sit at different angles, look different places, sit a little closer or further from the light. 
  • I took a lot of photos and felt kind of dumb. I was alone in the house.
• Go to Instagram. Filter and fade more than one photo from your set -- see what you've got. After you've shot and filtered your first set, shoot some more. Undoubtedly you learned something in the first go around.

*If you want to save your photo but don't neccessarily want to share it with the world on Instagram, take a screen shot. First, hide the icons for the filters, then, on the phone, hold down the home button and the power button at the same time. Screen shots were useful to me because I wanted to compare blur settings on a handful of photos, and it would have been unsupportable from an embarrasment standpoint to upload all those (almost identical) pictures of myself.

This whole project just sort of happened for fun on Saturday, I can't remember why...oh! I do remember why. It was because my hair turned out.

Well, have a great hair day, and happy photo making!

Comments

[Kamela]

I love this post! But---I really love your blog makeover too! GORGEOUS!!!

[Judy Aldrich Havrilla]

Hi Kamela!

Thanks! Would you believe, I'm still working on more blog makeover? ...restless.

Just poked around a bit on Modern Girl Style.<\a> am really impressed with your cute baby hat and chicken baby-t. Wonderful!