How to pose for the oh-so-casual selfie?
Hair up with whispers of a come-hither look?…. OR
… Hair down and a pearly white, off-kilter smile?
As you can see from my webpage photo, I tend to prefer the sultry look. Regardless, since it took me a zillion tries to even get those semi-decent photos, I think I should practice my casual pic pose a little more!
*The article below appeared, in full or in part, in The Montreal Gazette, The Vancouver Sun, Edmonton Journal, and The Province.
Social Photography 101
The camera doesn’t love me. It doesn’t quite loathe me, either. Occasionally, it warms up to my crooked nose and zigzag smile. But based on the law of averages, I can safely predict that I’d rather see most shots taken of me disappear into the vast digital universe where they came from.
Unfortunately, they often pop up on someone else’s Flickr photo montage or Facebook page. But I’m trying to get over it. Online photo albums and social networking sites are flourishing, and embedded cameras on cellphones, iPhones and computers give millions of new photo diarists endless opportunities to showcase their skill.
And true, the skill can get ugly. Much like most new art forms, social photography — photographs intended to be shared with a large network of people — is one that beats to the most unusual sensibility. Formalities like posing or centring the shot become extraneous. Rather, it’s all about documenting your own real-time narrative, and you don’t even need a third party to help you do it.
According to a recent article in the New York Times, all you need to do is to reach out your arm, aim somewhere around your nose and snap, flash or click! You’ve got a perfectly acceptable self-portrait, aka “Selfie”, to post online. An instructional online slide show running with the piece explained that these shots should look fun and slightly off-kilter. And, like the self-portrait artist Cindy Sherman, funny costumes are welcome, too.
Whether it’s a wonky selfie, or you posting a few action shots of your pals, photography this millennium is certainly not what it used to be. But, like everything else that looks effortlessly cool, major preparation is often involved.
The fashion artists and “The Selfie”
In the days of black and white photography, smiling was hardly a standard feature. In the ’60s, Kodachrome film was at peak popularity, along with those over-the-shoulder glamour portrait shots. In the ’80s, the Polaroid camera had everyone saying “cheese!” Now with digital photography, sans film, there’s an unlimited supply of photo opportunities, along with an endless variety of poses.
The trick is to post these moments on the right website.
For example, there are online communities specifically for ladies who want to grrrrrrrrr in their stilettos. These shots might come across as forced, or even narcissistic, in non-fashion-themed venues like Facebook, but they happen to look like well-executed ad campaigns on websites such as Lookbook.nu.
It came out of the fad of posting what you’re wearing today, explains Erika Altosaar, an art student at Concordia who regularly takes selfies of her outfits for the website Lookbook.nu.
On Lookbook.nu, young women and men from all across the world, typically aged 18 to 24, document their high-calibre street style for the community.
And in this world of fashion-conscious divas, feedback tends to be quite positive (“You are so perfectly perfect. I love your hair. so extraordinary,” was one of the 80-plus similar toned comments Altosaar received after a Lookbook.nu profile piece.).
Altosaar also posts photos on her Facebook and Flickr accounts, along with her blog. “Facebook (photos) are more my personality, for friends,” said Altosaar. Flickr is where she displays photos of her artwork, and her blog, which has 1,428 followers, is a visual diary of her life as a burgeoning artist.
However, Altosaar’s Lookbook.nu photos are much more high-style than the ones she posts elsewhere. She often posts her photos in doubles, creating a mini-collage that focuses on different features of her style. She sometimes looks away from the camera, and occasionally her back is turned to it. In her profile picture, the focus is on her red Pebbles Flintstone-esque high ponytail.
The final impression is both gritty and beautiful.
To take the shots, Altosaar uses a digital camera set to a timer. The whole process takes about two minutes, she says. After this comes the editing, where she touches up her pictures with Adobe Photoshop.
“My camera is really poor quality, so I have to saturate the colours a little bit,” said Altosaar, who is quite skeptical about over-doctored photos that appear online.
The stylist
Whether it’s for Facebook, Flickr or Lookbook.nu, painstaking choreography is a feature of this art.
“You can take an image, spend five minutes, and make your waist an inch smaller, remove that zit that crept up two days ago and even change your eye colour — which I have seen done, by the way,” says Zeina Esmail, a prominent stylist from Toronto.
If you’re not savvy about Photoshop like Esmail, or an expert selfie taker like Altosaar, this can leave you with an array of horrid photos. Esmail explains, though, that the trick is to practise. “Everyone has a good side, so try and fake your angle toward the camera where you know it loves you best,” she said.
What about smiling? “I wouldn’t say smiling is for everyone; some wear it better than others. But definitely being more pleasant is a good foundation over looking sad, disgusted or unhappy.”
To help train one’s skills, it’s best to enlist the help of a very good friend — otherwise, it’s just you putting in the hours practicing that timed selfie technique. All these little tricks and editing tips are somewhat ironic, of course, seeing that the final impression is to look hurried and casual. It’s all about planned casualness, as Esmail calls it.
Being casual helps disarm you on digital social networks. Think of the off-the-cuff nature of a Twitter composition of the small caps in a text message; the informality helps people seem approachable. Coming across as smart or funny or good looking yet causal on these new media venues is what makes some online artists more ‘with it’ than others.
Models R Us
Fashionistas and party animals make excellent photo fodder. But travellers, kids, pets and other wholesome populations can be equally engaging social photography subjects.
Larry Rinzler, a father who works at Beco Industries in Montreal, has set up a Google Picasa web album for photos of his kids. “I always loved videography and photography, the art of capturing time,” he said. “About four year ago, I brokered a deal with my mother-in-law: Produce a grandchild, and you can choose any camera you want.’ Naturally, I chose a high-end Canon DSLR.”
Two kids later and another on the way, Rinzler has yet to put down his growing collection of cameras. “I love [photographing] my kids,” he said.
He remembers how his dad used to take five minutes to pose the family to get a great shot. He managed to frustrate most people, he said. Still, Rizler prefers spending time taking quality shots and not sitting at a computer editing for hours. “I’m stubborn and will retake until (I) get it right. I’m also obsessive about deleting substandard shots on the camera immediately.”
Rinzler’s style is classic. He says he has zero tolerance for a blurry and off-centred subject. Cut-off heads/limbs, even a scowl or a crooked smile are out. “And, unlike many, I am terribly considerate about deleting the unflattering shots (of people),” he said.
Today, Rizler often uses his Nikon D300. “I also have a point-and-shoot little Canon, an iPhone and a BlackBerry, but I can’t stand taking shots on anything other than my Nikon.”
The frame
Turns out, with all these visual diarists lurking about, professional photographers are not an endangered species. They’ve adapted to the times. “The whole idea behind what I do is to keep it as real as possible,” says Vivian Doan, a Montreal lifestyle photographer, who refers to her technique as photojournalistic. Her portrait shots of kids and families are typically set in their natural environments –say, their house or at the park — and many feature an off-the-cuff sensibility, like blurry backgrounds or cut-off limbs.
“It’s an aesthetic. When parents call me, they don’t want a magenta-style photo studio. They want something fun and organic,” she said. With kids, she often starts out shoots by a good laughing and tickling session.
Doan believes the trend was inspired by the Soviet-style cheap and easy-to-use Lomography camera. “(Lomographers) have a slogan called shot from the hip; that’s the new thing. It’s acceptable because it’s so free.”
Professionally, though, she tries to not cut off limbs too much: “I’ve clipped people’s heads a bit and I’ve had complaints. It doesn’t bother me.” By using digital, Doan says she spends as much time editing as she once did in the darkroom. Most professionals spend hours processing photos to make them look how we want to look, she said.
“There’s nothing wrong with manipulating,” said Altosaar. “It’s deceptive, but it’s so much a part of the 21st century. I personally do it a little bit, but just the colour, just because I wouldn’t want to post something that doesn’t look pretty.” Overly nipping and tucking an image is a cause for concern, she thinks.
The real problem with manipulation, of course, is that the photo taker is the one who’s in control of fixing someone else’s crooked smile. And unless you pay them big bucks –or you’re Larry Rizler — that sharp shooter probably won’t bother before posting them online. Gritty can be cute these days, after all.
So go spend an hour or two practising Esmail’s moves, I know I will. If that still fails, just wave your ponytail instead. Apparently they photograph well.