After coming back from a recent holiday and work trip I got a lot of questions on my instagram photographs. I did not have a personal photographer and I'll be honest in saying I do not believe you need a personal photographer to take high quality images.. just a bit of direction, a good camera (I used my phone) and arrangement skills on instagram can make a big difference. Many of the people that took my pictures from work colleagues to my family... really don't take many pictures or have a burning passion for photography! I would give them direction and what I wanted in the frame, where I would stand or walk and that's literally it. After a little while as we ventured from Nepal to India they would tell me what looks good and voila! It really wasn't rocket science nor a high paid production! 😆
I'm not really a photography pro at all, in fact I couldn't even tell you what ISO is! I think as a fashion designer and someone who loves to snap photos it helps. I constantly have to rearrange images and look at colour, campaigns and things that sit well and I think this really gave me an eye to enhance my instagram (almost like a visual mood board).
So here are some tips I use for myself
1. Interesting subjects- Things that interest you
I like to include things that interest me (travel, fashion, design or food). I believe your instagram should be about what you want to show and this is truly a personal preference. I love to find interesting places on my travels. I would say India was an easy one for this and even Iceland and Vienna had very interesting and breathtaking settings. As for fashion, I keep focus to what I wear and try to make the focus more on the outfit and surrounding setting rather than my face. It makes it easy because I never have to worry about my face looking strange in certain angles and walking images from the back, are some of the easiest to take rather than posy ones looking at the camera. Not having my face in pictures has made it easier, shows outfits and gives more focus to prints, shapes and patterns.
2. Colours and Accents- Flow
I always organise my images and group them in colours and accents. If I upload a blue image with an accent of yellow I try and find the accent colours in other images so the feed flows smoothly. So I don't suddenly have a pink image followed by black one.
3. Planning feed
Although I don't plan my feed I would say it helps. This is where you can download an app and upload images to see what your instagram feed would look like. I usually plan my feed with rows keeping in mind colours, but it's all in my mind mainly because I feel it's a lot of effort to plan out a whole feed. With holiday images I upload as and when. I do in fact delete images on my instagram once I upload them if I feel they don't sit well, which is excessive but you know.
4. Bin the low res images
Low resolution images aren't bad except when you have a good quality one next to it. The inconsistency is a bit weird and this does happen to me when I try to crop or zoom into images. So I try to think of the crop before the images are taken. If the picture if taken from far I already know I will be blurry, so it's important the surrounding setting looks good, so I don't need to crop further.
5. Limiting filters
Filters can make images blurrier and I try not to use them. I try to play around with the brightness and saturation. I don't usually have time to photoshop images and to be honest I have never felt like I needed to. I like that the images are more authentic this way rather than adding extra stars into the sky etc. I feel this can also mess with image resolutions also.
6. Geo-tagging and hashtags
I used to hashtag like crazy and it does help. I also use location tags and this is great too! Lets be honest most people hate people who hashtag like crazy but it's a great way for people to see your images!
8. IG stories
Posting on IG stories with a location tag or location hashtag can lead you onto the location stories and give exposure bringing people to your instagram.
9. Post rates
Posting 3 times a day is the optimal amount of time to post on instagram, but even a regular post once a few days helps to keep things a bit more consistent. With Instagram's new algorithms... if you post after 1 month or so it can push your image down on other's feeds meaning they may not see it at all.
10. Don't overthink it
This isn't rocket science but it's personal to everyone and it's important to just understand everything you see isn't the real life everyone lives. It's important to realise Instagram can showcase the best of the best! Don't stress about it.
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