Whether you use Instagram as a casual part-timer, or it is a branding tool for your personal business, it’s good to know how to take perfect Instagram photos you can. As it happens, there are ways to take perfect Instagram photos more easily, by following a few simple tricks and tips. In this post, we’ll take you through a number of these secrets, so you can boost your follower count and get so much more out of the app, on your way to creating a perfect photoblog.
Work With Natural Light
Essentially, a photograph is determined primarily by the photographer’s use of light. As long as you have got the lighting correct, you are going to find that your photos are a lot more successful and that they really look the part. Wherever possible, you should aim to use natural light. Natural light creates richer and brighter photos than those taken with your camera’s flash, where the subject will often be washed out and the whole picture obtusely flattened. Ambient light is always better than artificial. For more on lighting, check out this article.
Figure Out Your Aesthetic
Although people will only see your photos one at a time, you want to create and work with a general aesthetic, which can then be seen on those occasions that someone does flick through your bio page. It is probably going to take some time and plenty of trial and error to figure out what your aesthetic is, and the only way to do it is just to take more photos. To that end, spend some time taking photographs that are not necessarily going to go online, but that you can use as practice. In time, you will get closer to a unique aesthetic which will unify the photographs nicely.
Use The Rule Of Thirds
It is absolutely going to help you if you make a point of learning some of the photography basics, and one of the essential photography basics is the so-called Rule of Thirds. This is a guideline for creating photographs which have an aesthetically-pleasing composition. Generally, it states that a photograph’s layout should be broken down into thirds, vertically and horizontally, giving you nine parts in total. Many modern cameras, including phone cameras, have the option to superimpose a nine-square grid on top of the picture as you are taking the photo, to help you see this more clearly. Essentially, you are aiming to place the photograph so that interesting parts of it sit along the intersections of these lines.
Although this will not work for every photo, it’s a good rule of thumb to start off with and to use as a springboard from which you can start to improvise in other ways.
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Use Night Mode
If you are taking photographs at night, you should make sure to use the night mode on your camera. Most modern cameras, and certainly every phone camera, will have this option, so it’s something you should look out for. With night mode, your camera is going to help to adjust the lighting so that you can take better quality photos when there is little or no ambient light – and all without using the dreaded flash. For a rundown of using night mode on an iPhone, check out https://backlightblog.com/night-mode-iphone-camera.
Take Care With Exposure
No, we’re not talking about social media exposure here. We’re talking about the light exposure in the photographs you are taking. You are certainly going to want to master this if you hope to become a better photographer. The exposure is basically just the amount of light in the photo. You will be able to tell an overexposed photograph by the way that it looks too bright, essentially washing out the subjects in the image. Underexposed photos will be dark and hard to make out objects and subjects. Play around with your exposure settings to ensure you get the best shot every time, bearing in mind you will generally need to change it for each new shoot. Find more exposure tips on how to take perfect Instagram photos here.
Upgrade Your Equipment
The fact of the matter is, most modern smartphones have cameras which are better quality than most of the cameras that ever existed before the 21st century. However, if you want to push your Instagram photos above and beyond the rest, you could always think about upgrading your equipment, so that you can take perfect Instagram photos better. This is an easy way to take better photographs, although not necessarily a cheap way.
And that’s it. If you follow these tips, you are bound to start producing much better Instagram photos in no time.
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Great tips, thanks for sharing!
Glad you found them useful!
I have trouble creating a nice photo, so this post is so helpful! Thank you for sharing!
Glad I could help!
You are very right. The filters plays a big role but also the angles and the equipment. I’m still struggling sometimes with time management as Instagram can be very time consuming if you don’t plan out your pictures and captures ahead.
Exactly! I find it more productive to plan ahead as otherwise I end up posting pictures and captions that provide no value! Thanks so much for reading xx
Very helpful tips. As a photographer I totally agree using the rule of third. Thanks for sharing.
Oh that’s amazing! I’m not a professional just picked up a few pointers a long the way!! Thanks so much for reading xxx