Using a cell phone to shoot a headshot
Client: Portraiture made easier
Date: January 2014
One of the most important things to remember when it comes to portraiture is the lens can be your best friend or your cruelest enemy. Selfies do you no favors. Using your cell phone to shoot a picture isn’t necessarily a bad thing but if you're using it to take a picture of yourself, you will always end up with the dreaded fisheye effect. What this means is your nose will look considerably larger than it really is.
If you must use your cell phone, follow these tips to get the best results. Enlist a friend to shoot it. Make sure they stand back about 3 ft to avoid the fisheye effect. Ideally, they should zoom in and fill the frame with your head and shoulders. Cell phone cameras usually have an field of view of 24-50mm which is wide angle, a portrait lens is usually between an 85mm and 105mm lens. The longer lens flattens and flatters where a wide-angle lens rounds the subject and um…makes your nose big and the rest of your face small. Find a place with nice, diffused light, preferably coming in from the side. A frosted window or a window with a gauzy curtain work well. The person shooting the portrait needs to be a few inches higher than the subject.