Academy 9 - Transformation 14 - Ready for your closeup
Welcome back girls.
This letter is the start of our work on figuring out how to present you to the world in the best possible light as we’re going to be going over some basics for photographing yourself. It goes hand in hand in with your sissy dating and, as we mentioned in the opening letter to that topic, don’t panic! We’re going to go nice and slow to get you comfortable with things and you won’t be forced to share anything. If you’re feeling nervous, we hope that working through these lessons will help you become comfortable enough with this that you actively want to share the exotic, girly creature you’ve become with others (and trust me, there are plenty of people out there just dying to meet her!).
Most of you have everything you need to start taking pictures but first we need you to do a little planning, then we’ll have a fun collection task and then get snapping.
Location, location, location
Where to take your pictures is as important as how you dress or what poses you use. You don’t need you to go outside, taking photos indoors is perfect and the environment is much easier to control.
Look around your house or room. What’s the lighting like? What’s the background like? What kind of light do your bulbs emit? Is it yellow tinged and warm or white and stark.
If you’re restricted on space, make sure you have an area that you can move or tidy the clutter away from relatively easily. If your background has a lot in or is very untidy, it will distract from what you want to show.
Equipment
Most of you have a phone, so you’re good to go! Those of you that don’t will hopefully have a tablet or laptop or computer that has a camera on. If you have none of these, I wonder how you’re following the course but it just means you have an item to add to your budget!
Selfies are good but also limit what you can do. You should be able to fashion a stand for your phone so it can be held in place pointed in the direction you want (rubber bands can come in useful for this) and then use the timer function to give you time to take a position.
If you want to make this slightly more convenient, look to get a tripod or stand that comes with a bluetooth camera control. These are pretty cheap and make positioning your camera very simple and lets you take pictures without having to be in physical contact with your phone or using the timer.
Homework
We are just jumping straight into things girls and that’s on purpose. Experience is very important here. The next letter on photoshoots will break down how to take good pictures but it’s easier to understand when you’ve tried and have your own examples you can work with. So for this homework, don’t worry about the quality of what you’re taking or how you look, just do as you’re told and do your best!
You have around 10 days until we pick this up again and 5 homework tasks here. Do them in order and on different days but they don’t have to be done on consecutive days and can be spread out to fit in with the time you have.
You’re also free to watch any Top Model series and episodes as general inspiration. No one expects you to look like those girls or to take pages of notes, but it can help you to get into a more model and photoshoot frame of mind.
You will probably feel silly when you start doing this and even be tempted to stop and delete all your pictures, don’t worry about this it’s natural. It’s why I’ve told you that your early attempts won’t be very good, because no ones are!
Everyone starts feeling awkward and looking at pictures knowing it’s not quite right but unable to put their finger on what the problem is, but then you practice and learn and you can look at your early pictures with fresh eyes and see what went wrong. Just as with your voice, you started with a recording of your male voice and then use it as a base to measure your progress, so with your early pictures, you can use them to see how much better you’ve become.
When you’re doing your homework you should be in girlmode. Makeup isn’t required but wig, boobs, clothes etc are.
Day 1
Make a folder in your Google Drive and call it “Photoshoots”. Make 5 folders inside it, and call them:
Inspiration
Day 1
Day 2
Day 4
Day 5
Today you need to take a minimum of 10 pictures of yourself in different poses. Do it completely cold, don’t look on the internet for ideas just think about what you consider feminine and follow that.
You can take more and all of these should be saved into your “Day 1” folder. If you have multiple pictures of the same pose, try and only keep the one you consider the best.
Day 2
Today before you shoot, you need to warm up! Do a quick dance workout to get you loose and then when you’re shooting, have a femme playlist in the background.
When you’re ready, repeat your Day 1 poses and save todays in “Day 2”.
After you’ve finished, spend a little time comparing the two days and see if you can see a difference.
Day 3
No photo taking today, get your girly music on and get browsing the internet! You want pictures of women and transwomen striking poses. These can either be formal photoshoots or more candid, casual moments and can be nude, partial or fully clothed.
What’s important is that the poses strike you as feminine. They can be sexy or nurturing or sassy or elegant or intimate but they should be poses that are instinctively female.
You want a wide variety of women and poses, and the aim is for you to have 50 to 100 pictures. This should take between 30 minutes to an hour and you can break it up into three 20 minute portions if that is better for you but it should be completed on the same day.
Day 4
Look through your “inspiration” folder and pick out 10 pictures. You now need to copy them and take pictures of yourself in the same position. You can take multiple versions (in fact you should take multiple versions) and save all of them in your “Day 4” folder.
When you’ve finished, go through your folder and pick the best one for each pose, the rest can be deleted or saved in a “discards” folder.
Day 5
Put your dancing shoes on and warm up! Do a short dance workout to get you warm, then put on your girly playlist and repeat yesterday’s homework.
Strike the same 10 poses, and pick the best photo for each one, discarding the others by either deleting them or saving them in a folder just for discards.
Not that you’re all done, you can browse your folders and see if you’ve improved over the past few days. Did warming up and playing music help you take better photos? Did having some inspiration to work with make a difference to doing it completely cold?
Keep an eye open when you’re on the internet or looking through magazines. If you see a photo that catches your eye, you can save it to your inspiration folder. Not every pose will be right for you, but if something strikes you, you should always save it and try it for yourself.
