Ah, the selfie.  You either love them or hate them.  My generation grew up with MySpace, where we constantly saw the trend of mirror selfies.  That’s when I learned to hate selfies.  We made fun of those photos where guys took a shirtless mirror selfie and girls did the crazy duck lips.  I’ll admit that I, too, took my share of duck-lip photos, but only with friends and not for a mirror selfie.

I remember taking photos with friends in high school that would be considered selfies today, but we didn’t call them selfies.  We didn’t have front-facing cameras on our phones, so we had to take multiple photos to get one decent one.  We would usually just ask a stranger to take our photo to avoid the hassle.

You would think that after a solid decade of the selfie trend that they would all look fabulous now, but I still see a lot of mistakes that can easily be corrected.  Since it would be super awkward for me to post a ton of photos of myself on here, I asked for the internet for volunteers.  Three lovely ladies responded to help me illustrate my points.  To further illustrate how you can make some simple changes, I asked them not to edit or apply filters to their photos.  Here are the three most common selfie mistakes and how to correct them:

1. Laughter

The first way to improve your selfie is to laugh a little when you take the photo.  Your smile looks more natural and you look like you are genuinely happy.  Weston and I use this trick every time we take photos together!  It’s just a slight change, but look at the difference it makes in Megan’s smile!

2. Angle

Next, take your selfie from the right angle.  Victoria is so good at taking selfies from the best angle!  If you hold the camera slightly above you, you create a more flattering angle for yourself.  I see so many photos that are taken below where you would normally look, like in the first photo.  Why do people do this?  Are you trying to hide the camera because you’re embarrassed to take a selfie?  It took me a while to get to this point, but if you’re going to take a selfie you need to be proud and own it!

3. Lighting

As a photographer, this is one of my biggest pet peeves when I see selfies.  Most people don’t look at light the same way I do and they don’t know that it’s not good light.  But, hopefully you will see the differences below and see the light in a whole new way!  Brittany is a fellow photographer, so she knew exactly what I was talking about when I asked her to take these photos.  In her first comparison, she is facing direct sunlight and squinting a little.  Then, she turned around and had the sun behind her, which created softer light and she didn’t have to squint.  Her second comparison is inside and you see the window behind her and the light is hazy and dark.  All she did for the next photo was turn around so that the window light is hitting her face instead of her back.  What a difference!

There you have it!  Three quick fixes to up your selfie game.  What do you think?  Do you make any of these common mistakes?