Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Much to my own surprise, this week is a topic people have asked me about for literal years, which blows my mind, but here we are! Welcome to PHOTOS 3: TILLY’S GUIDE TO SELFIES.
This is all related, first of all, to the Trans Tuesday on PHOTOS AND REFLECTIONS, and how those can be so difficult for so many trans people for most of our lives.
And then there’s the Trans Tuesday on PHOTOS 2: THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE, when everything changed and I started seeing myself in photos all the time without even trying.
Over the past few years, especially after all my photos flipped to being amazing for me, people asked me for tips on taking selfies. Trans people, certainly, but even cis people were asking me how they could get such good selfies.
And at first that was so weird to me. Well okay, it’s still so weird to me. Because I look at the photos and I like them and think they’re wonderful, but that’s literally all I care about. So the fact that they (and by extension, me) could look good to anyone else wasn’t even something I had considered.
Though I should have, for I am very hot and cute and need to be told so regularly 😌
It’s important to know that cameras lie. But they also tell a truth. Not the truth. It’s complex!
So a camera only records exactly what’s in front of it, right? Yes! Exceeeeeeeept…
What’s in front of it is drastically impacted by the framing of the photographer, the lens, the lighting, perspective, the angle of the shot, and more.
I love this image, but I have no idea where it’s originally from.
The genius of that image is it’s used to talk about the way the media frames stories, like refusing to name Trump’s bigotry for what it is and instead saying he has “unconventional ideas” or whatever.
But it also works for actual, literal cameras. The person controlling the camera controls what you, the viewer, see. The camera isn’t lying, but it’s also not telling the truth.
In fact, Hollywood has used this sort of thing for ages for special effects, long before the advent of CGI. This gif from the silent movie Safety Last! shows you how forced perspective provided an astounding special effect.
So that camera wasn’t lying, right? It was showing you exactly what it saw. But the people using that camera used what it saw to distort what you saw. And this is how cameras can both lie and tell the truth at the same time.
Forced perspective is used all the time, and in fact is what was used, rather than CGI, through most of the Lord of the Rings films to make the hobbits appear small!
Here’s some great articles about it.
So the art of a good selfie is being aware of things like that, and manipulating the camera to get it to show the you that is the truth, and not a distorted view of who you are and what you see.
Annnnnyway, over the course of taking mumble mumble number of selfies, I’ve learned a whole lot about what works and what doesn’t. And while what works for me may not be what works for you, there are some general guidelines that will help everyone!
I believe there are three main components to good selfies:
1 – Lighting
2 – Angle of the camera lens (and the lens itself)
3 – Your style
I shall now attempt to explain them all as best I can! Let’s go in order.
LIGHTING
Your best lighting is almost always going to be sunlight, but not direct sunlight. It’s way too strong and will wash you out or make things look harsh. That’s true of artificial light too, however.
Direct light is harsh, and even more importantly it casts hard shadows, which are going to make absolutely everyone look bad or like you’re in a horror movie.
You want diffuse light, ie light that is ambient or bounced or reflected back toward you.
This is the main reason most of my selfies are taken in the same spot in our small apartment, because it’s the one place with really good, natural, diffuse lighting.
Note the lack of hard shadows (or any shadows!) as I half-turn toward the light source so the diffuse light is hitting my face and front side.
I take my photos right next to a big window, but never when the sun is directly shining in the spot I stand.
So the light you see in them is bouncing in through the window off the street, sidewalk, plants, and buildings outside. It gives a really soft, natural glow and I swear to you that’s fifty percent of the entire battle.
What happens when the lighting is bad?
This photo was taken by my lovely wife Susan at Nickelodeon for the Monster High “graduation party” that wrapped season two of the show. We wrote six episodes that season! That’s why we were there. If you didn’t know, now you know.
Anyway, I like this photo because it shows me and my fabulous fit at the Monster High party, but I don’t like how my face looks in it at all. There’s no dysphoria from it, it just looks… bad. And kinda not like me.
This isn’t Susan’s fault. In fact, she’s the one that told me there was really bad lighting there but I wanted a photo anyway. It was important to me to commemorate the show and getting to attend the party, but it’s not a great photo of me.
There’s harsh light directly overhead, and look at the stark shadows it’s casting all over my face. It makes me look weird! That kind of lighting will make anyone look weird, which is the point.
If you’re not thinking about lighting, you’re going to have a really tough time getting photos of you that look good. There’s a sort of meme along the lines of… if you want to know where the good lighting is, just follow the trans girls. We spent a lifetime waiting for amazing pictures of us, and even subconsciously many of us figure out how to find the good lighting wherever we’re at.
If you can’t tell where the good lighting is in your home, it’s super easy to figure out with modern phones. Just turn on the front facing camera so you see yourself on the screen, and then… turn and walk around, paying close attention to the ways the light and shadow move across your face. When you find a spot that gets you good, consistent, even, diffuse lighting… X marks the spot.
If you’re outside and it’s really bright, photos in the shade are your friend. But there’s other things you can do, too. My large sunhat (in stealth trans pride flag colors, heck yeah) can turn direct sunlight into diffuse sunlight that hits my face, meaning I can get pretty good selfies anywhere outside when I’m wearing it.
ANGLE
We all have angles we prefer and dislike, for a variety of reasons. There are angles we feel we look better from, angles that are unflattering to almost everyone, angles that help us see what we want to see. People say they have “a good side” for a reason.
I’m partial to the right side of my face, as opposed to the left side. I don’t hate the left side! But I think the right is… better somehow. It probably has something to do with my left cheek having a scar on it that I really don’t like.
And like, don’t feel bad if you have scars. Scars can be cool! But this one isn’t, for me, for reasons. I don’t like it, and I think it messes up my selfies, so you will rarely see it.
It just so happens that I am also right handed, and so when taking selfies I hold the phone with my right hand, and thus it’s easier to shoot the right side of my face.
It also just so happens that the spot in our small apartment with the best lighting is the window I take most of my selfies near, which requires turning to my left for better lighting and no shadows.
It’s a trifecta of things that make right-handed selfies in that one spot work really well for me.
But also you might not even realize just HOW much angle will affect how a person looks. We can debate whether this photo is a selfie or not (I used a tripod and a remote, so it’s me taking the photo, but I wasn’t holding the phone), but here’s a straight-on shot of me.
Look how much it changed the shape of my face compared to the selfie in the white top with poofy shoulder thingies. I’m the same human, nothing major happened to me or even with my HRT between these two photos, so no major changes to my face have occurred (see the Trans Tuesday on HRT if you need more info).
This is exacerbated by the very light shadows on the right side of my face, your left as you look at the photo. This is because I’ve turned a bit away from the light source (the window I use), and so my nose and other features are now casting those shadows.
They’re very faint, because it was very bright when I took that photo and a LOT of light comes through the window, so it’s not dire, stark shadows like in the one from the Monster High party. Soft shadows can be okay (and you may even prefer how you look with them!), but they will change the way your face is perceived by both you and others.
There’s also likely to be some kind of distortion no matter what angle you use. In fact, different lenses shot from different distances can completely alter the way a face looks. Here’s a great article about it!
So how much can the angle or lens change an image? Well all of my selfies are taken with my phone’s front-facing camera, so the lens doesn’t change. But my distance from it does (especially when I use the tripod), and the angle always does.
Look at this shot of me in my first bikini!
Pretty great, right? It’s okay, you can tell me. 😉
But look at my stomach there. Which is a weird thing to say, but it looks soft and nice.
But I’ve worked for years and YEARS on shaping my body with exercise, it was the first thing I ever did to start my transition. You can read all about it in the Trans Tuesday on BODY HACKING.
So when I posted that bikini pic to social media, I had to include a second photo… because that first one does not at all accurately show you what I’ve achieved with my abs.
Now look at me in the bikini from another angle.
Look how different my abs are in the second photo! Look between the two photos and marvel at what angle alone can do.
For that matter, feel free to ogle those biceps I’ve worked so hard for. I love them so much.
Okay but now look at that exact same bicep in similar lighting but from an entirely different angle.
That angle erases all the years of work and progress I’ve put into my biceps! It looks tiny and barely defined at all.
And if angle alone can do that for a bicep, just imagine what it does to a face.
You can find the angles you like and that you think work for you the same way you found good lighting.
In fact, that’s where you need to start. Go back to that “X marks the spot” that you found with good lighting, and now use your front-facing camera and move it all around you. Up, down, left, right.
Look at the ways it changes your face shape and appearance, and find the ones that show the true you. In fact, just turn your phone sideways as if taking a horizontal selfie and watch how that changes your face too. Because you’ve moved the lens and it’s now shooting you from a different angle, which will make you look different.
For what it’s worth, I STILL haven’t figured out how to find an angle I really like in horizontal selfies. So if I want to take a selfie with a bunch of people all gathered and turn the phone horizontal to fit them all into the frame, I’m not gonna like what it does to my face because I haven’t found the right spot for it yet.
I don’t take many selfies in landscape mode for a reason. I mean I don’t often have occasion to, though, so I don’t practice it. And if we don’t practice at something we’re never going to get better.
Practice, practice, practice! It really helps.
If you pay attention, trans folks, you’ll see a ton of cis people who post great selfies are already doing this. They know their angles, they know where the good lighting is, and they stick to them.
And that’s great for them! And for you, too. Do whatever you have to in order to make the camera show you the truth.
STYLE
This is one that may seem unrelated, but it really matters.
Part of (but not the main or even biggest portion of) the reason I disliked so many of my early selfies is because it took me years of trial and error to find my style, to find the clothes that truly expressed myself and who I am.
And so, surprise surprise, when I was taking selfies in clothes that didn’t accurately represent me… those photos didn’t accurately represent me! It definitely played into them not feeling all the way like “me”.
I did a whole Trans Tuesday about FINDING OUR TRANS STYLE that may hopefully help you through it a little, but unfortunately it’s something we all have to figure out on our own. Nobody can tell you what your style is.
We can tell you what we think might look good on you, but what we think is not what you think, and until you’re happy in your skin and your style, your photos might always feel like they’re not really you yet. Because they aren’t!
So do what you can to settle into the way you want to express yourself through your clothes.
Find the angles you love.
Find that good lighting.
Experiment. Fail. Learn. Experiment again.
And eventually maybe you’ll find your way to selfie nirvana.
If it happened for me, it can happen for you.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com
