 Hey y'all what's up my name is Sonali welcome to my channel if you are new and if you are definitely hit the subscribe button down below and if you're already subscribed make sure you have your post notifications on so that you can get notified every time I post a video. Today I'm spilling all the tea on how I take my own Instagram photos at home. If you guys watch my vlogs you know that I have a boyfriend and he does take I would say majority of my Instagram posts but when I don't want to bug him or if it can be done on the tripod and he's away or something like he is today I will just do it on my own. So I thought today would be the perfect day to show you guys the tools that I use to take these photos and just some tips on how to look better in these photos and how to take better photos. So we're gonna kick this video off with what tools I use. I would say I use a mix between my camera and my iPhone for my Instagram feed. If I do have a lot of time to spend on the photo or photos I do prefer to use my camera because the quality is just so good and the camera that I use for my Instagram photos is the a7 III and the lens that I use for my Instagram photos drum roll please I feel like everyone always asks me this is the Sigma 35 1.2. I'll be the first to admit that the setup is not very affordable. I am a photographer and videographer so it was easy to justify buying a new camera I actually used to shoot with a Canon 70D and that was awesome but I feel like this camera has amazing features. The feature that really sold me on this camera was the eye autofocus so Canon or at least my model of Canon did not have this so basically when you're taking a photo of someone else the focus goes straight to their eyes which is perfect because especially with this 1.2 lens a 1.2 aperture really gives that blurry background which might blur out a little bit of your face since you know your nose is all the way out here but your cheeks are all the way back here so if it is a really really low aperture in a blurry lens it might just like blur out a little too much of you so you always want to make sure at least your eyes are in focus and this camera autofocus is so well with my Canon I would have to tap the screen where I want it to focus like it wouldn't just like autofocus well it would but it sometimes it wouldn't be accurate of what I want it to focus on if that makes sense so half of my photos from that one session would be kind of out of focus but with this camera I swear like 99% of my photos are in focus which is awesome because then you have more photos to choose from so for my iPhone I have the XS Max it currently has some water damage and some cracks all up in it luckily the cameras are safe so that is all that's important to me but I'm really excited to get the new iPhone whenever it comes out I'm really excited to see what they add on especially to the camera I feel like every time I watch the Apple Keynote all I care about is the new camera the next tool I have is this little guy it's basically a mount that you would put on your camera and then you would stick it into your tripod and I use this to take my vertical pictures because I do not have a heavy duty tripod and my lens is really heavy itself so when I go to like kind of flip it over on the tripod itself it kind of just like slides down or just like moves too much my dad actually got me this and it's been literally a lifesaver because I can kind of rest my camera and kind of put it like that so it has this little bar um so that the lens won't like slide down because it's so heavy the next thing I thought I would just include it in case you guys don't have a lot of natural light it's basically a mini ring light that you just slide onto your camera I mostly use this for videography if it's in a really dark place but I feel like it would be really great for photos too obviously you do need a tripod because that is going to be your photographer of the day so I will link a couple of options down below ranging in prices sometimes it's better to spend a little more and get the heavy duty one because these tripods will last you forever so this is the main tool that I wanted to talk about today this is the star of the show so this whole thing is called an intervalometer this side is the receiver which you plug into your camera and then this one is a transmitter which acts as a remote when you're taking photos I'm pretty sure this tool is well known for taking time lapses of landscapes sunsets all that but I am using it for taking portraits of myself so I know that there is a setting on my camera for time lapses but what this tool does that my camera doesn't do is refocus is every time it takes the photo this is obviously super important because when you are taking self portraits you want to be getting different angles you want to be kind of moving around a little bit so the fact that this tool can refocus every single time it takes the photo is amazing so I customize my settings so that every time I press this play button there will be five seconds in between every burst of photos and then there's six photos taken every burst and I think that goes on for about six or seven rounds so after those rounds I just go to my camera and just check them out see what I need to be doing different and then start over another thing I love about this tool is that you don't actually have to hold it physically and take the photo every single time because it has those customized settings so I know there's a lot of those remotes for the iphone but you have to physically press it every single time you want a photo even for my camera it has an app that connects to your iphone and I can take photos on my iphone but then I have this big clunky iphone that I have to try to hide in every single photo so those are all the tools that I can think of right now if I'm missing anything I will definitely add it throughout this video but now let's get into some tips on how to look good in these photos that you're taking at home the first piece of advice especially for the people that are just starting to take photos of themselves is to not do anything too crazy with your appearance because I feel like whenever I try something new and it doesn't go well it definitely plummets my confidence for the whole day if you do try something new with your appearance just prepare for ample amount of time for any errors that you need to fix I always recommend putting on lashes for any photos or videos that you'll be making they honestly just look so much better than regular lashes but obviously if you have like the most full and beautiful long lashes then you don't need this step the next tip I have is to try to contour your face with obviously bronzer I feel like adding color and contour to your face is going to make your face look so much more chiseled in these photos and maybe even a pop of highlight too the last tip I have for how to look good in these photos is to accessorize to the nines as you can see I always love to layer some necklaces and never take photos without earrings accessorized with even just bags sunglasses props props are so important when you're taking photos of yourself because it makes you feel less awkward if you're like holding something before we get into actually taking the photos I have a few quick tips on the content batching process the first one and probably most important is to be prepared with photo inspo every time I see a really cute post on Instagram I always save it to my Instagram saved boards this is pretty much like a Pinterest on Instagram and honestly I use this a lot more than Pinterest this helps to make your shoots a little bit more efficient because you'll know exactly what posts you want to do but I definitely recommend putting your own twists on these photos try not to copy exactly what you see when you do get the hang of taking photos of yourself I do recommend to switch up the hairstyles every now and then so for instance if my hair is curled in one photo maybe the next photo I will do a half a path down the last tip I have for when you are content batching is to get as much variety as you can so try to get those far away photos full body photos maybe detail photos flat lays close-ups selfies all of that those are all the tips that I have for y'all so let's get to shooting so I just put my camera mount on the tripod and now I can have it vertical because this bar kind of stops the lens of you know tilting or going anywhere else so that is why I use that tool I have these beautiful flowers I got this week for my friend Maggie this is kind of gonna be my prop for this shoot I freaking knew I was gonna forget one of these tools but this is another one that is really helpful basically it's literally just a mirror that reflects the screen so that you can actually see it because my camera unfortunately does not have a flip up screen so yes after the timer and the photos are taken I can go back and look at the photos but it's also great to see it in real time what you're like doing if the pose looks good so they recommend to take off the eye thing in the back that I'm gonna slide this on the hot shoe and then this is really cool because it has another hot shoe on this tool so then I can put the intervalometer receiver right here for this tool you actually have to tilt your screen up like this so as you can see it is pretty small but it's definitely helpful and it's pretty affordable too so I'm working on some poses right now I thought it'd be cute to have like the florals kind of in front of me and just kind of like lean on the counter I'm gonna turn on the remote and let's get started so I was wrong it takes one photo every five seconds and it goes for six rounds they honestly look a little too posed so I think I might back it up and just I don't know play around with some different poses I think this was like round five or so and I feel like I finally got the angle and kind of like the pose down that I wanted but honestly let's do one more time just to make it perfect I think we got some winners this is the next look I added a hat for an accessory and I put my hair in a low ponytail just to give it a little bit different of a look we're gonna go into my guest room because I feel like it totally fits the vibe of this super comfy long I think it's like a tunic but I'm wearing it as a dress as you can see this room is a little bit darker than all of my other rooms so we are gonna have to crank up the ISO but first I think we're gonna have to pull this desk a little bit over because I want to be in that corner right there good enough if you guys do have the Sony a7 III I wanted to share a really cool tip with you guys the suns that I'm using is a 35 so as you can see it gets kind of the desk in it and I don't want to get the desk so what we're going to do is come to menu and we have this setting right here this camera is a full frame camera and this setting makes it a crop sensor kind of setting and we can press on and then it literally just punches in gets a little bit closer as you can see my bed is right here and you know I can't really scoot it up closer unless like I want to put my tripod on my bed which I really don't because then I will be uneven and then I actually customize my settings on this camera so that every time I press this down button it goes back and forth so this is full frame crop sensor one of my biggest tips was to prepare some inspo photos and these are all the photos that I've saved that are just under my category of hats and I think I found some cute ones I think it would be cool to like not show my face for once because I feel like my instagram feed is all of me and just my face especially during quarantine so I feel like one of these photos would look really cool just like not showing the face another huge tip that I have for y'all is to try to create as much movement as possible so as you saw I was kind of trying to twirl in the dress and even like with your hair you can kind of create movement with that it just makes it look a lot less posed so I noticed that this dress is super comfortable but not as flattering as I thought it would be so I decided to make this kind of just like a closer up photo the next photo I want to take today is a flat light kind of thing I feel like my nails are nicely painted I want to get some of this gold jewelry in it and then I'm also making a matcha ice latte so I feel like that could be really cute I just really liked this lamp and wanted to include that so we have my iPad then we have this bomb dot com from glossier I love it I feel like I forgot to mention light boxes and ring lights when I was talking about the tools I use but these are the lights that I use they are just like this kind of softbox light and I will link them down below and I'll also link my ring light and some dupes because mine is the diva ring light I know I got it like way back when like OG youtubers started getting ring lights so I'll link that one down below but I'll also link some more affordable options I really recommend getting some type of light especially if you're taking iPhone photos because on the iPhone photos you can increase exposure but it looks really weird so as much natural light or you know artificial light you can get is ideal I did want to show you guys this really cool thing like I said you can kind of brighten it so just tap anywhere and hold and then you can kind of scroll up scroll down all right guys I think it's time to pour nervous I got a lot of photos I kind of like pulled my sleeve down halfway through because I thought it would be cuter um and I kind of wanted to just get more of like the lamp and the nightstand I changed it into my next outfit right now I'm going to try to do like the fake mirror selfie basically I'll literally just be taking a photo of myself like the camera is my mirror but there won't be like any mirror edges so it'll just seem like it's a really large mirror I don't know how graceful I'm gonna look sitting down these jeans because they are like pretty stiff I have a hair tie that's like a freaking sin when you're taking photos of yourself or anyone else so always look for your ties wait they actually look so so cute and good oh my goodness sitting down in jeans and that's not usually flattering wow wait these look freaking fire another hack for all of my thicker girls out there when you are sitting down um I always like to try to put like my hand in front of my little belly because sometimes there's you know belly rolls I mean everyone has belly rolls but honestly sometimes it cuts your shoot in half usually that's like my main issue when I'm taking photos of myself or someone else is taking photos of me I just feel like I look a little chunky so if you cover it with your arm kind of like that or like holding something it looks supernatural and not like you're trying to cover your stomach but it works trust me this was my favorite photo of the session but when I went to go post on Instagram I realized that my lash was literally falling off like hanging by a thread so I couldn't post it because I literally did not know how to like photoshop that so RIP did this photo but still cute that wraps up this video I hope you guys enjoyed it and learned a lot and got some inspo for your at home shoots if you made it to the end of this video comment down below which was your favorite photo that I took today if you guys aren't following me on Instagram already go ahead and do so it is so underscore gnarly without the G I'm really proud of my content lately I feel like the theme is pretty consistent and I love all my high quality pics also before you go don't forget to subscribe and turn on your post notifications for my videos and I will see y'all in my next video bye