And you guys have heard me talk about Fiverr before.

It's a website that connects you with freelancers

who can help you to build your brand.

There are logo designers, copywriters, voiceover artists,

website designers, and so much more.

There is a link in the description that will take you

to my curated store so you can see

some of my favorite sellers over there on Fiverr.

Today's been a bit of a weird day for me.

It's Thursday, which is usually the day

that I film my videos on.

But I just have had no motivation

to film any of the videos I already have planned.

So I did what any reasonable person would do.

I asked on Twitter and Instagram

what you guys wanted me to make a video about today.

And one of them really caught my eye

so we're gonna go on a little adventure.

(gentle upbeat music)

I'm gonna show you guys how I shoot photos of myself.

(gentle upbeat music)

Much better.

One of the reasons that I bought my first camera

was because I wanted to get better photos of myself

to post on social media.

You quickly realize that when you're the one with the camera

you actually end up taking photos of other people

way more than you end up getting good photos of yourself.

So along the way, I figured out a way that works for me

to take more photos of me.

Hopefully this way is helpful for you.

But there are a couple other ways

that I'll try to explain as I go.

The way that I've found easiest to take photos of myself

will work with most modern cameras.

And that's to connect your camera

to an app in your cell phone.

Like I said, as long as you've got a fairly modern camera,

most of these companies are now making some kind of an app

that will connect to your camera

and allow you to monitor what you're seeing

and take the photo from your phone.

That being said, most of the apps

that I've used to try and do this

are not exactly user friendly.

There might be a little bit of fighting to get it connected.

You might lose some functionality that you normally have

when you're taking photos.

It's all a bit of a game of give and take.

Here's what we're gonna be shooting on today.

Now first things first.

We're gonna need a tripod.

And that should be pretty obvious.

Because if you're not holding the camera, who is?

In this specific case, I'm using my older tripod

'cause I'm currently using my new one to film this.

Obviously we're gonna need the camera.

I've got the a73 here.

I guess I can take this off

because I am no longer vlogging with it.

I've switched over to the a6400 for video.

So we've got the a73.

And we're gonna be trying out

the Viltrox 85 millimeter F1.8.

I have tried this on my a6500,

but I haven't tried it since I bought a full-frame camera.

Slap this guy on the tripod and we're ready to go.

(gentle upbeat music)

So first and foremost, I like to just set up my shot

and make sure that I like it.

Obviously there's some people walking through it right now.

But, that's okay.

It's feelin' pretty good.

Maybe we could move to the left

and get this centered up a little better, though.

That's better.

So this is gonna be a little bit different on every camera.

And the first way, like I said, is to connect to the phones.

So in the Sony cameras, we're gonna go into the menu.

We're gonna go up to the top,

go over to the little world thing,

and go Control with Smartphone.

Turn that on.

And hit connection.

Now because I had previously been connected to this phone,

it automatically connected again.

But there will be some kind of a Wi-Fi password

or QR code that you can scan

or you can use the NFC I believe it's called and scan that.

There'll be a bunch of different ways that you can connect.

Like I said, in this case,

because I was previously connected, it knew to reconnect.

So, as you can see here, I've got mirroring displays.

Interesting how different the color is in each of them.

So now that I'm connected, I'm gonna keep an eye on my phone

and I'm gonna go stand in front.

So the first round is generally just me checking

to make sure that once it gets focused on me

that I still like the composition and everything.

In this case, I do think it's lookin' pretty good.

I like that you can still see a little bit of the bridge.

All though, maybe F1.8 is a little too blurry

in the background.

Let's try F2.8.

I'm gonna have to, whoops.

And then I'm gonna have to crank up my ISO a little bit

to get my exposure proper.

Let's go hang out back in front again.

(camera clicking)

There's the F1.8 shot and the F2.8 shot.

And generally, I'm pretty happy with how that's looking.

So now it would just be a matter of going out

in front of the camera, trying a bunch of different poses,

holding a camera or something

to give it more interest in the shot.

This isn't a particularly interesting shot inherently.

But I think it's lookin' pretty decent.

And of course because we're all on Instagram nowadays,

let's flip that sideways and do a couple more.

One other thing to note is that I personally like

to shoot portraits at at least 1/100 of a second,

if not 1/125 or more.

The reason for that is because

all of the little tiny movements that your model is making

are going to affect how sharp your shot is.

So if you're looking to get sharper portraits,

make sure you're shooting at a fast enough shutter speed.

I am losin' my light real fast.

But before I get onto telling you an alternate way

that you can also take photos of yourself,

I wanna talk about today's sponsor.

So you've taken a bunch of photos of yourself,

maybe you've made some presets,

you wanna put 'em up on your website

but you don't know how to build a website,

you need to make a logo.

You gotta do all sorts of stuff to get this stuff

out there on the internet.

And you might not know how to do that.

This is where Fiverr comes in.

Fiverr empowers the creative community

by connecting you with freelancers

who can take care of some of those things

that you might not want to or know how to do.

Fiverr has that talent on the website

and they can connect you instantly.

Literally, you can go on there and find so much.

And all you have to do is click a button

and you'll have an order made.

There are different options for all sorts of budgets

and all sorts of projects.

So use that link in the description

to go check out my custom curated Fiverr store,

see some of the people that I recommend,

some of the people that I've worked with in the past.

And, if you'd like to see something else on my store,

make sure to hit me up.

Thank you to Fiverr for sponsoring this video.

Now back to being vain and taking photos of ourselves.

Aw man, it's startin' to get dark.

Let's crank this up.

I tried to catch golden hour,

but it just went from, like bright to dark.

So, personally, I think connecting to the app,

even though it has its disadvantages

and it can be a little bit glitchy at times,

is probably the easiest way for me to take photos of myself.

But there is an alternative that I also recommend

and that's by using an interval timer.

Now again, this might be something

that's built into your camera.

The newer Sony cameras all have interval timers.

The old ones had the PlayMemories app

where you could get an interval timer.

But you can also buy one to plug into your camera.

I will leave a link in the description

and you can go find one from there.

So let me see if I can show you how to make that happen.

Now again, this might be different on your camera.

But I'll show you,

it's in the first menu on the fourth page.

We're gonna go to Interval Shooting Function,

we're gonna go to Interval Shooting, turn it on.

We're gonna take one every,

let's say, yeah three seconds should be okay.

We're gonna wait for 10 seconds to get in place.

The Number of Shots we're gonna take is 10.

Now one of the catches with interval shooting is that,

depending on what your camera is,

it's going to be different

as far as how the auto-focus works.

In this case,

I've never had good luck getting the interval shooter

to auto-focus in between shots.

So what I'm gonna have to do this time

is actually set a manual focus point

and just try and stick with it.

Now especially at F1.8, this is gonna be a little difficult.

But what I'm gonna do is go set my backpack

out where I'm gonna stand and then focus on that.

Focus on that and then I'm gonna flip into manual focus

and tilt it back up.

Now I'm gonna say a little prayer and go stand where I was.

These are super moody,

mostly because it's starting to get so dark out here

that I'm actually getting underexposed.

And all I did here was moved back and forth a little bit

so that I had some variance

just in case the focus was off a little bit.

Hopefully at least one of them was in focus.

Oh look, I went way too far forward on that one.

But I think that one looks pretty cool.

So, if you've seen photos of me up on my Instagram,

that's probably how they were taken.

It's not an easy process.

And it's definitely not foolproof.

And sometimes it just doesn't work out.

But it's a lot of fun, it's quite challenging.

And if that kind of thing just isn't for you,

then I would just say go shooting with friends

and have them take photos of you.

Thank you do donny_ducktails

who was the one that suggested this.

I know a couple other people have suggested it

in the past before.

But when I reached out today, he was the one who said it.

And thanks to Fiverr for sponsoring this video.

Again, the link is in the description

if you wanna go check out my curated store.

As always, I wanna hear from you.

Is there a different way that you shoot photos of yourself?

Let me know in the comments and on your way down there

make sure to hit that like and subscribe button.

Thank you so much for watching.

I'll see you next time.

Holy crap, it's getting so cold out here. (laughs)

This is fall in Edmonton, it'll be winter in a week.

(gentle upbeat music)