8 Ways to Improve Your Instagram Photos
If you love social media and also love a bit of photography, then Instagram is the perfect site for you. It is also a perfect way to boost your brand, be it a personal one or for a company. But getting the right photos are key to success on the site and here we look at ways to improve your Instagram photos for even better results.
Get the right picture
The great thing about digital photography is the quantity of pictures you can take without worrying about using up your film. Even memory these days is less of a worry with memory cards being easily available. The trick to getting the right picture is to take plenty and give yourself plenty to work with. Make use of the camera app on your phone as this will likely have a few default settings that let you try the picture in a few different ways.
Consider the composition
You don't need a course in photography to realise that your bedroom might look great but you don't need your lounge wear included in the image. So consider what is in the image and make sure you remove anything that doesn't have a benefit to it. Sometimes less is more so consider a simple and bland background that really highlights the foreground item, especially for product shots. Here are some good tips to get more instagram followers.
Consider going horizontal
When you are cropping your picture, don't fall into the trap of making everything square. Some photos naturally look better when they are horizontal or landscape orientation and there are a few that work best in vertical orientation, also called portrait for that reason. So don't assume that your picture has to be a neat square if the content doesn't fit into one correctly.
Look at your focus
Another element of composition is remembering that you don't always need to have the focus of the image in the centre. Use grid lines or simply image them and place the focus off centre, in a corner or even diagonally - this helps get better pictures.
Get the right lighting
If you are taking a shot of something, always consider the lighting. While editing can fix many problems, it needs something to work with. Many good Instagram photographers don't make use of the flash on their phone as it simply makes images look a little weird. But there are different fixes for an image that good smartphones let you apply before you take the picture so you can make the most of the natural conditions.
Move, don't zoom
Zooming is the speciality of the digital camera but with most smartphones, you can simply move the camera nearer to the object to get a close up. If you have a macro setting on your camera, then this is perfect but really good close ups can still be achieved by getting in there.
Elbows as a tripod
Other shots require you to be as steady as possible and if you don't have a little tripod in your back pocket, then use the natural option - your elbows. Brace yourself so that you move as little as possible to get the perfect still shot. You can even use this idea to get movement shots, swinging in one direction or the other.
Use Instagram tools
Instagram itself has tools that can help you get the best from your picture. One popular one is the straightening tool, allowing you to line up your image perfectly. It creates a horizontal line through an image and allows you to move it to line up with this. This straight line creates a naturally more appealing look to an image and therefore increases its appeal.
