Perfecting Your Selfie

Video Transcript

Marianne: Welcome back to Good Day. Has anyone out there not taken a selfie? Everybody takes selfies, but there are ways you can make them look even better. Right now Nerds On Call is here to help you perfect your selfie technique.

Ryan: If anybody knows about selfies, it’s nerds. We know all about…no not really. I think I’ve taken, like, three in my entire life, but you know, when I give my kids, then we’ve got some. So let’s talk about taking a good selfie. What you want to do first is put it in context. If you’re just going in taking a picture every day and throwing it up on Facebook, nobody wants to see that. We’re done. So instead, you do something like, “Hey, check out this cool new eyeliner I got,” or, “Hey, here’s my friend that I haven’t seen in a while,” or “Hey, I just got ran over by a bunch of puppies.” Something to make it interesting, it’s not just a picture of you on the street.

Make sure that your composition is good. Use the rule of thirds. Now, a lot of people who don’t take a lot of photos don’t know this, but if you break your screen down into a grid, and try to put interesting objects within those areas, it’ll be a much more interesting photograph. And you can turn this on in your phone settings and turn on the grid mode.

And then also you can off-center yourself just a little bit in the screen. Makes it a little more interesting, rather than just a kind of a straight-on. And then also make sure you have good lighting, make sure the light’s not behind you, make sure it’s not shining directly in your face. What you want to do is just have it off to the side. And what you can do is get one of these cool little things. This is a little flash, you could put it on your phone, and it just inserts right into your headphone jack here and it’ll give you…if I can get it in there, in your headphone jack there, and it’ll give you the right kind of lighting.

Marianne: Does it give you constant light, or does it go off like a flash?

Ryan: Constant light, and it has its own battery.

Marianne: Oh, yeah, cool.

Ryan: And here’s the really cool part. If you’re taking pictures outside, a lot of times you get a real harsh shadow on one side. Use this as a fill light and take away some of that shadow, so it looks pretty cool.

Marianne: That’s pretty amazing. Does that have a battery in it right now?

Ryan: Well, I didn’t charge it before the show, I kind of nerd-failed on that one.

Marianne: You’ve been kind of using it, yeah. Nerd fail! Nerd fail!

Ryan: Also, when you’re taking your selfie, make sure that you don’t take it straight-on, like this, or from below. It will look like you have a double-chin, even if we don’t.

Marianne: No, we don’t want that.

Ryan: Or right up your nostrils. So about 10% angle, so that way you can get a nice shot.

Marianne: All right.

Ryan: And then, that’s it. Then we’ve got some accessories.

Marianne: Ooh, we love accessories.

Ryan: Everybody’s seen the selfie stick, but this is a cool one. This one’s actually got a Bluetooth. This is by Gnome, it’s got Bluetooth so you don’t have to worry about pressing the button or setting the timer or anything. It’ll just do it automatically. It’s got a great battery life.

Marianne: I have to say. I thought selfie sticks had been run out of town because people were hating on them.

Ryan: I know.

Marianne: But I was in L.A. a couple weekends ago. Everybody had selfie sticks.

Ryan: I was in Vegas and somebody had a selfie stick for their iPad. That was a little bit weird.

Marianne: [inaudible 00:02:30] arm workout.

Ryan: This is about 12 bucks and it’s by Gnome.

Marianne: Pretty cool.

Ryan: You can get it at amazon.com.

Marianne: All right.

Ryan: Another great thing is this is just a little Bluetooth remote control for your camera.

Marianne: I have something like that.

Ryan: This is if you don’t want to carry around a selfie stick but you still want to get a nice shot, you can set it up. And it comes with this cool little stand, so you can stand your phone on it.

Marianne: Yeah, kind of like a little mini tripod. I’ve seen something…I have one that came with a little tripod.

Ryan: Yeah. So this is $24.99, you can get it on Amazon.

Marianne: Love that.

Ryan: It’s really cool. And then, if you really want to get into crazy mode…

Marianne: Which I do.

Ryan: This is $80. Just a little clip-on lens that you can get for your phone, and you can do wide-angle lens, a macro lens, or something that’s called fish-eye, kind of distorts it a little bit.

Marianne: I love fish-eye. These are kind of fun, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ryan: This is about 80 bucks. This is by the holo clip (?), and it comes with…and I’ve got a case on here too that also comes with it, it’s $29 for the case, $79 for the lens set, and it’s got a little clip, so you can attach it to your phone from a little dongle, so that way it’s with you all the time.

Marianne: That’s a great gift for an obsessed selfie taker, which we have a few of those here.

Ryan: On this guy’s website, they’ve got all kinds of cool stuff, where they’ve got like a tripod you can set up, and a big flash you can put on.

Marianne: Fancy fancy.

Ryan: It’s the one phone that…everybody uses to take their photos is their phone now.

Marianne: Right.

Ryan: They don’t carry around a lot of big DSLRs, so if you…this little accessory just goes right in your pocket.

Marianne: Yeah, and they take pretty great pictures too.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marianne: Great accessories. We’ve got Nerds on Call’s info linked on our show info page on gooddaysacramento.com if you want to find out more. Will you be back next hour?

Ryan: Yeah! I think so. I don’t even remember what we’re talking about. We’re talking about something good, though. Oh, spring cleaning!

Marianne: Spring cleaning your tech gadgets. All right, that’s coming up.

Ryan: Thank you so much.