Need some fail-safe tips to improve your blog’s images? No worries! I’ve got some simple tips that’ll make your photos MUCH more special. Except for one. One is not that simple, but it’s definitely something you can learn over time, I promise!
Pip’s Top Ten Tips For Better Photos!
1. Find the light
Sometimes just snapping an image REALLY works, you can capture something great and edit things into shape on your phone or in Photoshop. That said, it’s totally worth taking a few shots, playing with variations and seeing how the light makes a difference to your image. Full sun, side light, back light, low light… they can all work well if used in the right way. Play around and see what looks lovely.
If you’re using an iPhone, you can change the light metering by tapping on the screen – tap a DARK area of the screen/shot-to-be and the phone will brighten up your image. Tap a LIGHT area and your phone will darken the image. Tap a MEDIUM TONE – light brown, for instance – and things will EVEN OUT, light-wise. MAGICAL, no?!
2. Clean the lens
It’s amazing how many cloudy, foggy images appear on Instagram, thanks to dirty phone lenses! I totally get how this can happen, because DER, the lens is in a pretty handy spot for smearing with your thumb/finger. Try to remember to clean the lens with a clean t-shirt or lens cloth or spectacle cloth before you take a photo. I just use the hem of my dress, to be honest! If you use a phone cover, you are less likely to smear you lovely lens, so take note of that.
3. Frame it well
Get closer or move away – but decide what goes in shot and what doesn’t before you take your photo. It’s best not to use the zoom to get closer, as it reduces the image quality, so just GET CLOSE (or move further away), check what’s in frame and then snap away!
4. Point of view
You can definitely take all your shots overhead or dead-on (from the front, nice and straight!) but it’s also worth playing around with shooting from other angles to see what looks good to you. Shoot through the back of the car into the car, maybe through a window, at table-top level, around a corner (with a little bit of corner framing the shot?) Try not to be too formulaic and predictable. Go a little bit crazy, ya know?!
5. Add a human element
When we shoot my books, I’m always really seriously obsessed with getting a bit of human in each photo. This might mean a body part (ew! But not really ew!) like a hand or a foot popping into the frame, or perhaps it’s some crumbs or something slightly askew. Try to add an imperfect, real life, human element to the images you make because that makes them relatable, that tells a story.
6. Capture a feeling
Don’t just capture the view. Capture a feeling. This is such a tough one to teach, but when you take a photo, ask yourself WHAT IS THE FEELING? WHERE IS THE FEELING? CAN I ADD FEELINGS?! All of the feelings, right?! Seriously though, it really separates the great from the ho-hum.
7. Crop
Sometimes we work really hard at composing a great shot and then, when all is nearly said and done, it looks a bit wishy washy. That’s okay, all is not lost. Often, honing in on the detail and cropping your shot can really help. Think about the essence of the image, what you’re trying to convey/illustrate. Making the image less busy can really help.
8. Check the sharpness, brightness and contrast
Perhaps the light was not quite right? This happens a lot, especially with iPhones because the screen is so small, it’s kinda hard to see what’s going on there, right? That’s okay, just be sure to check your image out later and see if you need to fiddle with the brightness, sharpness or contrast.
9. Other post-production
Maybe you want to do some other editing trickery, if you are a Photoshop or Lightroom user? If you want to learn more about that, you can play around with the Adobe free tutorials (on the Adobe site). If you are new to Photoshop/Lightroom, you can subscribe for a monthly fee and use these programs – they also have free trial periods so you can see if they are right for you.
10. Size correctly
Always, always, always use the CAMERA option on your iPhone. Don’t take photos within the Instagram app (or other apps) because they aren’t hi res enough for most bloggers’ purposes. Also, when you are uploading images to your blog, be sure they are sized to fit your blog post width. If you’re not sure you can find the post width in the html code for your post’s body OR it’ll be one of the choice of default image sizes when you upload your image to WordPress.