How to take a Cell Phone Self Portrait

So I don't usually post tutorials but this has been bugging me for a while.
When you are taking a picture of yourself in the mirror I really don't want to see your camera, so I thought I would post how to take a self portrait.

The goal is to see you not your camera.

This is similar to what people post on Facebook or Instagram all too often. I don't care what kind of phone or cover you have, sorry.

By turning your phone around and looking at the lens instead of the picture you will be taking you change the dynamic of the shot completely.

If you are worried about what the picture will look like you can see a reflection of the picture in the mirror. This also saves the embarrassment of showing off your bathroom counter.

You end up with a shot of you and that was the goal to begin with.

My son helped illustrate this by taking the pictures of me taking pictures of myself. I took the 2 self portraits using incandescent setting on my Samsung Galaxy Prevail II Boost Mobile phone.  I don't have the newest latest greatest phone but I make it work without showing it to everyone else in photos.

Try this and show yourself off rather than your camera.

p.s. this works well in dressing rooms too!

Motorola Photon, a Sprint phone for me??? #Cbias #MotoCalyp

Kiddo and I ventured to the local Sprint store to check out the newest phones on the market, especially the new Motorola Photon and similar devices.

Dakota,  a friendly young man  who was prompt and knowledgeable greeted us. When I explained I was on a research mission and wasn't looking to purchase today, he was more than willing to answer questions and turn off the sales pitch.


He turned on the display model of the Motorola Photon and mentioned the screen response and resolution as selling points. I was actually impressed with the screen resolution.

He also mentioned the on board memory at 16 gigs, that is a crazy amount of on board memory or at least that is what I thought at first, then I thought about it for a while; with an 8 mega pixel camera and the Android OS a person that was a serious phone user could actually use that kind of space fairly easily, but don't worry the expandable memory allows for an additional 16 gigs of space for a total of 32 gigabytes of memory.

Another feature that caught my attention is the 720p resolution HD video camera as well as the front facing video feature for video chatting.

A full range multimedia phone with 4G capabilities this phone is definitely set up for a trend setter.

The phone is available in stores and online through various retailers with a Sprint contract.  Sprint has an unlimited plan that with the Data premium will run about $110 a month plus taxes with a contract.

I wanted to compare the phone to something else to get a better idea if the phone was really all that. I had Dakota show me another Motorola phone, the Admiral.A couple things stood out, the resolution of the screen was not as good, it does have a full QWERTY keyboard rather than touch screen, a 5 Megapixel camera rather than 8 Megapixels, 4Gigabyte on board memory, etc.. The list goes one.

I checked local stores to see who else had the phone and was able to find the same phone for a similar price at Radio Shack.  If you are interested in this phone, I would recommend checking the local Sprint store, Radio Shack,  possibly Walmart or Target.

On a personal note, while I love the features of this phone, I am currently on a non contract program and absolutely love it, however I would be tempted to switch for this phone if the monthly price wasn't more than double what I currently pay for unlimited service.

Motorola PHOTON 4G an 8 MP camera and 16 Gigs on board memory, @Sprint has it! #Calyp 

Check out our full photo story on Google+

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias #cbias, all opinions are my own, online research was done on various tech sights as well as online retailers.

Little Mechanic

How I wish I could upload the video from my cell phone... Last night my husband changed the oil in my Mazda minivan as it was seriously overdue... Well my youngest Nathan decided to help. Mike let him finish tightening up the bolts on some air cleaner pieces as well as put the cap back on the oil filler... Nathan got to use the jack to raise up the van and move the blocks and then lowered the van back to the ground... It was so cute... I snapped a couple pictures on my phone as well as 3 15 second video clips... If my phone wasn't so old and such a piece of crap I would share....