When taking landscape photos, it can sometimes be helpful to put yourself into the scene to provide a sense of scale. The same is true for night photos. But the long exposure times make it hard to create sharp selfies. In this video, Alyn Wallace shows how to solve this problem.
In night photography, typical exposure times are between 10 and 30 seconds. Standing still for that long is difficult. Even if you hold your breath and strike a stable pose, your shape will usually be blurry. Wallace shares several solutions to this problem in the video. The easiest might be not to stand but sit. Other options are positioning yourself far enough away from the camera or using a wide-angle lens. Both approaches result in a small rendering of yourself in the final image. Any movement will be less noticeable.
Now, you might wonder how to release the shutter if you are many meters away from the camera. The 10-second self-timer might not be sufficient. Again, Wallace shares several ways to extend this period, including using an intervalometer. He concludes the video with a photo editing technique he uses to de-blur self-portraits with the clone stamp tool.
Another way to get sharp self-portraits that's not part of Wallace's video is to use time blending. If you follow this approach to take stunning night photos, you can take your self-portrait during blue hour and blend it with the exposures taken at nighttime.
