DYI Personal Branding Photos - How to Take Your Own Branding Images
Let me begin this blog post by saying that I absolutely love being photographed by other people. Taking my own self portraits for me is not about avoiding that discomfort of being in front of the camera, it’s more about time savings and editing control. I can see the eyes rolling haha - I am a total control freak you think. Nope, I gave control up since I had my first baby. The beauty of self-made personal branding portraits for me is in the convenience.
Now that that is out of the way, let’s dive in.
Set Up
You will need a tripod and a camera that has an Interval Timer Setting. I do not use a remote or my phone as a remote (although I am pretty sure I could). You also will need, like with any other style of photography, good lighting and a clean clutter free backdrop. I prefer to shoot my own content photos in my house, specifically in the office and my living room. I also love my bedroom as it gets the best light and has nice plants. You will also need a few changes of clothes. The one thing you should always get with your photos is variety of outfits. Nothing is more boring than the same outfit over and over again. Grab a few tops, hair accessories, props. You want to figure out where you will shoot; what poses you want to capture; and what you need as far as props and outfits go. Get all that prepared ahead of time.
I always try to look at the light source in my photos, so my tripod is usually positioned in front of the window, like in the photo below:
Shooting backlit is doable but challenging. For me, messing around with focus to get a creative backlit shot will likely mean hiring a photographer instead. Not worth the hassle alone. Once you found your good spot, figured out what you’re wearing, got yourself in a presentable shape (i have been living in sweats and messy hair working from home since 2008, 2020 has nothing on me) - you are ready to start.
Interval Timer Camera Settings
This tutorial is going to use my Nikon D750 as the camera body. Under the camera icon menu, Photo Shooting Menu, scroll all the way down to the Interval Timer Shooting setting. Here you can set the number of shots to be fired in general, and how often the shutter will go off. Mine is set to one frame every 5 seconds till it runs out of frames, and in my case I think the max number of frames was 1000. It’s indefinitely on Pause now until I am ready to shoot next time, then I just select the Restart option and it picks up where it left off.
Manual Camera Settings & Lens
I have tried all my lenses with ITS (interval timer shooting) and so far the best one to focus and stay focused is my Sigma art 35mm f1.4. I do not mess with the focal point, unless I have to. What I do is basically point in my general direction (where I will be in the frame), start the timer and let it auto focus. If the focus is missed, I re-adjust - I pick an object that I place in the same focal plane where I will be, and focus on that. For example, I will place a mug on the desk where I know my head will appear, and focus on the mug. Then when I jump into the frame, I just try to put my face on the same plane where mug used to be. Sounds complicated, but you just gotta try it a few times.
My camera is always on M (and if yours isn’t yet, let’s chat!). Usually based on the lighting situation, the ISO and SS are around 250-500 and I try to keep the aperture wide open - between 1.6 and 2.2. When too wide, the focus can be tricky. But I do love the blurry background that you get with an open aperture, so often I still try to shoot at 1.6 or so.
Start Shooting
Now is the best part. Start shooting! The only thing you should be aware of here is try not to move in and out of the focal plane too much. You will see right away - if you reached forward towards the lens, out of the space your lens focused on, you will be blurry. Try a bunch of poses, different looks, props, but check your camera every few shots. The worst is to do the entire session in one sitting just to realize later that all shots are OOF. I turn my camera off as a quick way to stop the ITS, turn it back on and replay. If I am happy with the focus and composition job, I keep going. Generally it takes me about 15-20 mins to shoot 5-10 good images. I shoot about 50-70 and obviously there are a lot of unusable ones, but to me its worth it.
Now tell me - have you done your own personal branding photos or portraits and how do you do them? I am so curious!
