While away on vacation, I would love nothing more than to have more pictures of myself actually enjoying the change in location and scenery. I bring a rather nice camera along with me (Canon T2i with an 18-55mm and a 55-250mm lens) that take wonderful pictures… in the right hands. I always hesitate to hand off the camera to a stranger (or even friends!) because the picture that they will take will (usually) not look the way I would have imagined it.

Is that a douchey way to think? Of course! But what do you expect? They aren’t me and they won’t know what sort of shot I am looking for.

What is a guy to do?

While on vacation in Miami, I could only think of one solution: eliminate any variables that you can control before giving up control of your camera.

Before handing off my camera to the waiter to get him to take my picture, I did several several things:

• Switch the lens to “Manual Focus”
• Set the right shutter speed
• Set the right aperture
• Set the right ISO
• Turn on the LCD viewfinder

My trick was to make it as simple as a point and shoot camera is to use, without having to have them fiddle with any of the settings.

Once you get used to asking people to take pictures of you with your SLR, you will be able to finally have pictures of yourself in front of the camera for once!