Transcripts
1. Self-Portrait Photography Masterclass: Look Like a Pro: Hello, guys. Welcome to my new class about shooting
a selfie like a pro. In this class, the main topic is to help you improve
your Selfie game. Either you just want
to have a new avatar or you just want to improve
your Facebook image or something at a little
less serious or we will dive into a bit
of the camera settings, editing, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera. So you can also do like a professional professional
Alfie to use in Linkedin or your CV or
something like that in a more business
focused environment. So let's dive into it. This is the topic for today. Where am I? I'm Pedro Tomas. I'm a professional photographer. 20 years now, time flies fast. I have worked with some big
brands from across the globe. I have done mostly
automotive work, but I have worked also
with models for magazines. I work a lot with
food photography. I work a lot with 360 shots. So my career as a
photographer has been almost every speciality or every category of photography
that you can think of. The one thing I don't
do is weddings. It's a trauma of mine. Nothing against
wedding photographers, but it's just my
personal trauma. I don't do weddings. The necessary equipment
for today will be a bit more than my usual classes. I try to slim it
down to the MAX, but today, you need
to have a camera. It can be your smartphone. It can be a mirrorless camera. It can be a pro camera
it can any type of camera that you can control
to a certain degree, it's what you need for today. You will also need a place. It's not an equipment, but a place that you
can control the light. For example, my office, I can control the light. I can close the blinds.
I can open the blinds. I can turn on or shut
off these lights. Lights, and you also will
need a dedicated light. I will be using this one. It's 100 watt small rig light. So if you want to
copy my settings, that's the light
you are going for. That's all the
equipment you need. Of course, you'll need some
software to edit your shots. When they're done,
light room Photoshop, anything like that will be
great, and it will do the. So, what are we going to do? We are going to learn how
to set up the camera, how to set up the environment, and how to set up the light. In this case, I will
only be using one light because I like to keep
my classes simple. I could be using two lights, ten lights, but I like
to keep it simple. Okay? So we'll only
be using light, one light source, and we will be doing a dark background selfie. I will be also teaching a light backroom
selfie, for example, for linkedin and
stuff like business is more welcome if you are
not in the creative business, if you are, let's say, a
CEO or something like that, a light background is more welcome in the
business community, let's say, but if you are
in the creative workspace, you can play with your
selfies a little bit more. So today, we will be doing
a dark background self. So now that I've
talked about what this class is all about,
let's dive into it.
2. Prepping the Selfie: The Art of Posing, Framing & Expression: Welcome to my class about
taking a selfie, like a pro. Today is not going to be
about the shooting itself. It's going to be
about pre shooting. If that makes any sense, pre shooting some
considerations you have to do before you start the shooting and some I will only touch in this video, I will not talk about, for example, composition,
for example, angles. That's something
which I will talk about briefly in this
video and not talk about further on because
I feel like that's something that when
you are taking the selfie you know exactly what you want to
take, if that makes sense. So let's start into this video. It's just some small
considerations to have before you take your self. So there are many
types of selfish. You can have the classical one, which it's a normal
one, let's say. Arm extended, take your selfie. You can have a mirror selfie, take yourself into a mirror. You can have group selfie
with a lot of people. You can have a creative selfie, where you change the angles
and be all like Wow, this is a new thing.
Conceptual selfie. There are many, many, many categories for selfies. Today, it's kind of a classical selfie,
meaning straight on, but with a bit of creative, meaning we will play with light and have a dark background
and stuff like that. So that's the type of selfie. Then next topic, framing
and composition. This is where I'm
going to touch on this subject and not further on. So now, framing and composition, this means what the
person is seeing. Meaning, this is one framing. This is another. So you can have the
person centered. You can have the
person to one side. I'm on the third line. I can have the person
to another side, and the microphone
comes with me. I can have the person
more, more down. I can have the person
standing up, sitting down. This is all about
framing and composition. Will not touch this for
their own way because I feel like when someone
is taking a selfie, they already know
what they want to do, sometimes they don't know
how to accomplish it. So this is where
you think about, okay, let's take a selfie. Let's all sit down
in this beach and take an awesome selfie that
is a group selfie, of course. So you know that before
taking the selfie. So that's why I'm touching on this video before taking
the actual selfie, okay? Angles. The selfie
is known for having the how I'm going to call this maybe the little
girl selfie, maybe. Where you put your phone way up and take your
selfie looking up. What does this do that is so appealing to especially
young girls? When you are looking up,
there's a part of your face, of your head that
gets stretched, that is something
that you never like, and it's the same
reason why you rarely, very, very rarely see
selfies from below. Why? Because this part under
the shin is something people 99% of the time don't
like on themselves, okay? So the selfie, I would say, either go high level or
go up, never go down. If you go down, just
go down a few degrees because there are two ways to
ruin the selfie going down. Either you go down and look
down and this creates what this creates a fat roll here, which is not ideal. I don't know if you can
see mine from the beard, but it is there or
you don't look down, and this is the most
prominent part of your image. Both cases, you don't want that. So in terms of angles and
perspective and stuff, I would say, gooey nose level, and up, don't go down. Okay? Very simple. I want to on this again. I feel like most people
instinctively know this because if they take a selfie from below,
what is that? And they never take one again, so it's instinctive then
another thing you have to worry about this I will touch a bit on my next video, but
facial expression. Depending on what you want
yourself to do and to portray, you have one of the most
important elements in all of photography in every
category of photography, which is your face. You can easily or with
only one element, your face, you can
convey emotion. You can do an angry face. You can do a nappy phase. You can do whatever
pace you want. It depends on the setting and what you want yourself
it to accomplish. If you want yourself
it to be professional, maybe a more serious face, a more businesslike face. If you want yourself
it to be playful, some joyful, some
playful expression. So it really depends on what you want your
selfie to accomplish. This, of course, has
to be thought out before taking the
selfie or otherwise, you would be taking 50 selfies until you are happy with it, but this has to be thought
before taking the selfie. So that's it. I did
want to approach these considerations before
taking the actual shot. Most of them I won't touch again because I feel
like once again, they're instinctive
to the person. If I say to anyone. Oh, take a selfie off yourself. They instinctively
know not to drop the phone below because
it doesn't look great, and they instinctively know
if they want a face selfie. They want more of
the body appearing. They want the background
to be the beach. If it's for their curriculum, it doesn't make any sense, so they want a white background. I feel like these are things that go by
feeling, you know. So they don't really
have to be explained. I just have to be, Okay, I know this is this way. I don't know why,
but it's this way. Want to on this again. Thanks for watching this video. It's a very small video just for some small considerations
before taking your selfie. And now let's get
to the part where we actually take the selfie. Let's make our dark selfie. So see you in the next
video, guys. Thank you.
3. Actually Shooting the Selfie: Pro Photography Tips for Great Results: So welcome to my video about
actually taking the shot. Like I said, in the intro, today, we'll be
doing a dark selfie. It's a style that many people
have asked me how to do, so I'm going to focus on this one because I
think it's a little bit more it's a little bit harder to understand how to accomplish
it than a light selfie. A light selfie, if
you are well lit up, it's easier to accomplish in
her with the dark selfie. You have to understand how
light works so you can put your face in the
light and everything around you in the
darkness. So let's start. First things first, you need
to set up your environment. It's the most important thing. It's the thing that you can't
control with minor details. You can, of course,
shut down the blinds, go to I don't know, your garage and have no light, but you can't say, Oh, I want 1% light or 2%
light or whatever. So it's the first thing I like to set up is
the environment. For this particular dark selfie, which I will call
it from now on, because it sounds amazing. I'm going to shut
everything in my office. No external light will be coming so that's
something I will do now because I feel like it gives me more control
over what I'm going to do. Shutting the blinds is
the number one step. First of all, let's do that. Now that the environment is in the darkness or dark dark ish, We will put the camera and
the light where we want. You have to understand there
are many ways to set up a it's completely
personal preference. You can have a more flat light, meaning the light
coming from the front. You can have a more
cinematic light, which means there's
a separation on the front of your
face, more or less. It means one side is more
lit up than the other. And then you can have multiple with more lights, you
can have multiple other. I'm going to say fixes
because, for example, if you don't want
shadow on your chin, you can have a reflector
coming from below or a light that it's
not very strong. So by adding light, you can control
your environment. Today, like I said, we will
only be using one light. Let's keep it simple. So you can do this at home. You can use one light
like this if you have. If you don't have, that's okay. You can use any type of
light that you can control, meaning any type of light
that doesn't change too much, that you can control
the intensity. It's good. It's good
enough for this purpose, which is not going
to a pro level, but it's doing 18
to 90% pro level with stuff you probably
already have at home. So that's that. Now,
important thing, let's see the settings
that you want in camera. I can show you the
settings that I haven't changed since
I took the shot. So I have these settings. I'm shooting at 1/160 F four, and I'm shooting at ISO 100. Those are my settings. White balance, I'm
going to leave it in auto because
I'm shooting raw, so it doesn't really
matter, honestly, because you can, after the fact, control the white
balance and also because my light allows me to
control the white balance. As you can see now, this light
is much whiter than this, much colder than this one. It's because I set it up
purposely for that purpose. I set it up, so it makes this effect
from white to yellow. So if you can't control your
lights temperature, awesome. If you can't that's not
a problem, shoot in raw. Most people will find it good enough to shoot
with auto white balance. Some people will like to
do most work in camera, and then you can define your
white balance in camera. I don't feel it's necessary. So auto white balance for me, it's almost always
the choice unless we are talking about
video settings chosen. And keep in mind,
they can change. These are not
universal settings. I've made clusters before
where I didn't mention the settings on purpose because
they are not universal. This is just my experience in my workplace and
in my environment. So it can vary a lot depending
on your environment. Thing I will say is
don't go below F 2.8. Never go below F 2.8 for
a portrait. Never go. If you want everything in focus or the face in focus
because it will have a very fin line of focusing and you
focus on the eye. The tip of your nose can be out of focus or your ears
can be out of focus. If you go for, let's say, F 1.2 and you don't want
that it looks kind of weird. It's too much, in my opinion. So I like to keep it at F four. It's nice spot to be
in your aperture, and it captures in the
flight so you can do a dark background if you have
the external light source. In regards to the
external light source, you will see the settings. Now, these are the settings. I used Y Because
with my camera on, I can see how the light
effects with my settings. Shutter speed, I would always keep it below
1/1, two, five. Why? Because you might have minor movements that
you're not even aware of that might blur that awesome picture
that you were taking. So always keep it
faster than 1/125, so I keep it at 1/160. That's my reasoning
ISO 100, honestly, because I don't need to
have niger eyes of value. If the lighting was
not enough on my face, the background, forget it. It's dark, but the light
was not enough on my face, I would need a nigher ISO value. Also, the position of the
light is very important. Like I said, you can
have multiple settings, not settings, multiple lighting
positions to your light. If you want more flat, keep the light nearer
to the camera. If you want more cinematic. Put it more to the side. If you want, you can have above
lighting, below lighting. It makes a difference every time you change
your lighting position. For me, for a
professional selfie, I would like to keep
it either flat or just let's say 20
degrees to one side. That's a personal preference. Again, lighting
changes everything, so I don't want it to
be too over the top, let's say, like
lighting at 90 degrees. No, that would be a
little over the top for but if you like
it, it's not wrong. It's your style. So do you. That's my camera settings. You have seen the
settings on my light. So I'm going to now shoot my photo and you will
see how it turns out. Now that you've seen
how my photo turns out, you can see it's not perfectly pitch dark in the
back and my face is not perfectly or at
least it's not how I want it to look in the
final version of my shot. But you have to understand
that the raw file, it's called raw for a reason. I don't know if it's that
reason that I'm thinking of, but raw means it's not done yet. So it's just like meat. The meat is raw or
the meat is cooked. In photography, it's
the same principle. A raw file is not the final file that
you will in this case, not deliver but use on your avatars and
all of that stuff. So this is not the final view. This is just the beginning. And if you feel like
your expression is nice, the background is dark
enough in this case, and your face is lit enough. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to
be near perfect. So you don't have to do a lot
of work in post processing. You can jump to the next step, which is editing your shot. In this case, I will be editing this shot with you guys so
you can understand what I do, how I do, and I will
take you through every single step of
my editing process. So see you in the next video.
4. Pro Tips for Editing Your Selfie: From Raw to Final Image: Welcome back, guys.
Let's now edit the shot that I took
in the first class. This was a bit risky. I only took one shot
to show you guys, so the expression
might not be the best. What I want to show you
guys is how to do it. So I believe you are
now seeing my screen. So let's import my shot
into Lightroom importing. It's importing. It's a big file. It's a 61 megapixel camera, so it's a big file. Let's see how the file turned
out to be. It's very sharp. You can see here some damage
my dog did to me yesterday. She's Come on, man. It hurts near the eye. Come on. So you can see my expression
is a bit not perfect. Let's say, I would repeat this, but for all intents and purposes of this class, it's perfect. I want to do any preset work, so you can do this with me and understand step
by step what I'm doing. So first things first, let's start with the basic. It's called basic for a reason. So let's increase contrast. You can see the dark parts
are already getting darker. So the blacks, let's drop them. Not too much. What
do you want to focus on when editing is
the main character. Ignore all the rest
because that would be a mask that we will
do further on. But let's just focus on my face. It's weird to say,
but on my face, and there's a black part
on the left side of the shot on my right side of my face that changes
when I change the black. So let's put black where
you think it would go. Shadows, you can either drop them a bit or
lighten them up. It depends on your
personal preference. So disclaimer, this is
my personal preference. I have had people in
the past commenting. I wouldn't do that and give
me a negative review kinds. Of course, each photographer has its own style. So do you. This is just my
style of work, okay? Oh, this is where I like
my shadows, my lights. I just would drop
them a little bit, and my white, I can
increase them a little. Now, I will do just a bit of clarity removal and a
bit of texture removal, just a little bit,
not that much. Okay? So we started with this. Now we are up to this. So we are going in
the right direction for what I want
personally, okay? So vibrant, we can add
just a little bit of vibrance and a bit of
saturation. Just a little bit. Don't overdo it. If
you overdo saturation, the photo looks terrible. If you overdo vibrance, it doesn't look good,
it's not as bad, but don't overdo it. Tone curve. I like to
leave this to the end. Color mixer. We don't
need this at the moment. What I like to do on
the shadows and on the eyelights is to
put a yellowish tint. So we will see if it's
too much for this shot or not because like you've
seen in the video before, I've set my temperature
of the light to be on the yellowish
side on the warm side. So we will see if this
ends up being this way. Let's play with saturation
a bit and in luminance. So just remove a bit of
saturation and luminance. Let's make it a bit darker. Okay. I like this. The noise. We don't need it. We use Io 100, so for me, it's perfect. I don't want to
remove any noise. Sharpening it's the default
setting from troum. I don't need it to add
anymore, so it's good. Matic aberration. There's none. You can always check
it just to be safe. But there's none. You can always
click on the auto. If you feel like
it's a bit crooked, I don't feel, so it's not bad. It's almost in the
center, my face. So let's just do
that centering and scale up so it doesn't have that missing
content. Dens blur. No need, it will be a black
background, so it's okay. Postcrop vignetting
we don't need. We will now move
on to the masks. Can play a bit with calibration to see what it
does. In portraits. I don't mess with it
too much only if I feel like I've missed my
target in terms of colors, but my son rarely does. I can play with greens a bit, maybe before after
before, after. Let's just see Let's just
make no this is too yellow. Won't touch the blues. Let's play with
the greens a bit. Like how this is looking. So this is my
personal preference. This is how it will stay. Thing I like to do
before going into masks, I forgot to mention is to clean up any imperfections
that you might see. We won't use generative AI
unless we really need to. Like, for example, this hair that's here, we will remove it. It's a bit out of place, so we will remove this if
Lightroom cooperates with me. It's a bit sluggish.
I don't know why. Okay, removed. I have some airs that I
like to remove here. It's like I didn't
go to makeup before. Like, remove these
spots, not all of them, but some I like to
remove this one. This one is right in the center
because it's not a spot. It's where my dog
hurt me because she kept punching me.
I'm just kidding. Remove the damage
she done yesterday. I have a little red dot
on the tip of my nose, which I always remove. It's something it annoys me. But when in real life, I don't care, no one sees it. When you're taking a 61
megapixel shot off your face, the probability that someone
will see it is bit higher. So this is starting to look a little bit cleaner, remove this. I have a bump in my head that
I broke when I was a child, so I can remove this, although it's in the shadows, so it's not that problematic, but I think it looks
a little bit better, and there is an
issue with my lip. It's not cut. It's
how it landed. So I will remove this. I don't like to see it.
Let's just go to 200%. I will remove this top part. Let's just see if light
room does a good job. It's a bit sluggish. I'm sorry. Yeah, it's more neutral now, so it seems like a real leap. Now, you can change the whole
temperature of the image, which I'd like to do after
I've done all the adjustments. Now, yeah, let's move
on to the masks. First mask, background exposure. Drop it down. Don't
drop it down too much. Drop it down just
enough, so it's black. But if you drop too much, it seems like you are
in front of one of those venta black paints
that eats all the light, and we don't really
want to do that. We want just enough,
so it's black. But since the mask
isn't perfect, let me show you you don't
want too much black because these parts will always
be turned black. So you can always
brush them out, of course, my hair
is still here, yeah. So you can always spend the
time doing your brushing. I still have hair here. So, yeah, I still have
some hairs going here. Okay. This is pretty nice. Okay. Okay. So most of the
damage was on that side. I'm just going to
smoothen this out. Okay? This is still my neck. This is still my shirt. So I'm going to
smoothen this out. As you can see, automsks are not that smooth
in light room. They do a lot of spots,
small tiny spots, but that can easily
be fixed by just running a brush against
it, removing this. This is a quick job, so I
won't spend 2 hours on here. So I will just do a quick job here and just a quick job here. Okay. So it's a bit
better the mask, and I will call this
background. Background. Okay, so what do I
like to do next? This is my personal preference. Again, looking back,
I added too much, so I'm going to bring back
I'm going to put it as short. I have my starting point, okay. So I'm going to go to the masks, and I like to do not
select subject, sorry, select people, and I like to have some automsks
for facial skin, especially with women to
smoothen out the skin. Body skin, which I apply the
same effect as facial skin. Eyebrows, I don't touch
usually the eyes that Iris, the lips, the hair, and maybe facial hair. So this is phase skin. Always name your masks, okay? So I have a preset that
I called skin treatment. It's like a lighter version of the skin treatment
from lightroom, even so it's still way
too strong for me. So I like to just come to the amount slider
and just push it down. I can add a bit of
color to my skin, a bit of yellows, this same or body skin, and I will do exactly the same. Come here, another
bit of yellows. Okay? So now is the sclera. If anyone knows how to
pronounce, please correct me. And here, I'd like to increase the exposure a bit
and downward saturation, it removes some of the
reddish parts of your eye, the bloodshot, let's
say of your eye, English is not my
first language. I'm sorry, but it removes a
bit and brings out the white. So Iris, I have a preset for
this also eye brightness. I called it, which
basically let me show you the difference and see it
improves brightness a bit. So it's a bit of exposure. Contrast, always put contrast
when you increase exposure. Otherwise, you lose details. So always remember
that shadows improved or augmented or
more or whatever, and saturation also more. And if you come here to clarity, also increase the bit. I can always increase a
little bit because my eyes are too indented in
my face, in my skull. So it kind of depends
on the person. But if a person
has the eyes more outside the bit, this
is weird to say, but that they be
brighter on your shot because they are more outside and less set into your skull, weird things to say,
it's creeping me out. You can always change
the exposure to more or less depending on the person. So that's a little trick that I've learned
through the years. So mask number five is my lips, which I don't like at all. My lips are my Achilles heel. So I'm going to remove
exposure a bit and remove a bit of
saturation. Not too much. I don't want to
seem like I'm dead, but remove a little
bit of saturation. I feel like my lips
are too big and too saturated. It's
just a feeling. So my hair hair, you have to be careful with
hair because I've seen many people that say it's
good to increase exposure. It's good to decrease exposure, or it's good to
increase clarity or texture or it's good to
decrease clarity or texture. Do you, once again, there are multiple preferences. There are ways of doing this. There's not a right
or wrong way. I will do this my way. Since my hair is dyed yellow, is dyed bright, I'm
a fake blonde now, I will add a bit of exposure. I will increase
the shadows a bit. The dark parts, I have
to increase a bit, so it seems like there
is too much contrast. I'll bring up the texture, so you can see my hair is
more defined and clarity, it's like, improving the
contrast in my hair. So before, before, after. It seems like there was more
of a light focus on my hair, and then I can add
a bit of yellow. So it's a realer,
more real color. My hair is black in the
bottom because I need to paint it again and yellow
on top. So that's it. And now we're going
to the beard. Same as hair. It's a bit of I like this or I
like that. So do you. I like to decrease exposure
little tiny little bit. I like to increase the
clarity and the texture. So I can see every single
detail on my beard. So after, after. It seems like my
beard is a bit more fluffy or more I have more
beard hair, and I like that. If you want to go
the opposite way, just do the opposite
offer I did. So this is almost my final shot. Now, I like to play
with exposure a bit. A general exposure. It's something you see, I didn't touch
until the very end. I like to do my
adjustments first and exposure to
compensate everything. I like to go down a bit. I, I can go down a little bit. Now, the Rs I can
go up a little bit. No, too much. If you
put it too much, you turn into a vampire.
So you don't want that. You just want the color to pop because this
is the original. It's too dark because not
enough light went into the eye. If you like this, it's
more of a real color. I have not so dark brown eyes. So this is more of a real color, and it's about it. If you want, you can always, I say this dramaticize even further this effect of having the shadow
on your face. I like to keep it simple, do a linear gradient
and reduce exposure. You can see, the linear
gradient is until of my face, and then I can drop it. What I like to do is subtract
with a brush the areas that I'm sure would be super
well lit up like this part. Also, my forehead, I'm going
to put a bigger brush. This I'm sure would be brighter. So as you can see, it just made a little bit
adjustments here and there for parts that I'm sure
would be very well lit up. So yeah. And you can do this and
always name your mask. So increase darkness left. Let me just take all
these elements from the. We started from here. We ended up here. Of course, you may
not like the result. You may want less yellow, so you can change
the temperature. You think my skin is too yellow. If you think you don't like
this or that, it's up to you, but this is a dark
background portrait or selfie because
I took it myself. So it's a dark background selfie and this is how it's done. You don't have to have
the background right. So you do the final adjustments when you come to
the editing part. And yeah, that's about it. I could be here another
hour just correcting stuff. Like, for example,
I just noticed this mark on my face,
which I would remove. Yes, go back. There are
some these dots, go back. Okay, so I like this
a little bit more. So you can tweak, and I could be here all day
tweaking this shot, but you understand the basics. So now you can do your
own dark selfie if you. You wanted to do light
background selfie, it would be much easier. Just have every light
you can in your room. Don't close your blinds. Don't do anything of
the things I did. You would still use
this light to light up your face just because the face is the most important thing, light it up perfectly, and then set your settings
on your camera accordingly. Of course, this depends on
your lens, on your sensor, on your camera itself, on 1 million things. So I can't give you a guide. I can't give you a table. I can't give you
use these settings. When people do that, it's wrong because every camera
is a different camera. For example, I'm using
a full frame camera. If you use a crop sensor, the settings would be different. If you use a medium format, the settings would be different
using your smartphone. Even those that can set the shutter speed or some
can set aperture, I think. But for example, shutter speed, the settings will not be the same because
sensor is different. They cature light different. So that's something I
can't really give you. You have to set your
environment and then fine tune your settings
the way you want them to be. I showed you my settings, but that is if you have the
same equipment as me or very, very similar and have
a similar environment. So I can't really
give you settings, but I can answer your questions, so feel free to ask them, and I hope this was helpful. And I hope you like this video. So yeah, thanks for watching until the next
one, guys. Thank you.
Pedro Thomaz, Pro-Photographer
