Okay not just your Instagram Husband, but any friends or family members who might be taking pictures of you occasionally when you are in a cute outfit, or a you are having a drink in a cool bar, or you guys just went on a vacation.
But if you suck at photography and want to improve your skills with some basic tricks than this is the perfect place to start.
Since I’m usually the photographer of the group I take cool photos of others, but I had to spend some time and explain stuff I want when we switch places on the sides of the camera. After experimenting I managed to gather some tips that are simple so every photography newbie will be able to use some of them. And they will finally understand what you are talking about.
0.Use grid lines
This is not even the first step, it’s the 0th! Especially if you are using a phone to take photos. I promise you, it will help so much!
Grid lines are available on most of the modern smart phones so look up how to turn them on.
If you have an iPhone follow these steps:
1.Open settings
2.Open the Camera app settings
3.Turn on “Grid”
When you are done with this step, you can continue. (I’m so nice for allowing you to read on, right?)
1.Rule of thirds
“The rule of thirds is a composition guideline that places your subject in the left or right third of an image, leaving the other two thirds more open.”
Google
So how to implement this easily?
Take a look at the grid we applied in the 0th step and the place the subject (for example: the person, the food etc.) where two lines are crossing each other. If your subject is tall you can align it with one of the vertical lines, and if it’s wide choose one of the horizontal lines.
This trick is especially useful if you also want to capture the mood of the environment.
Like here:
But even though I’m positioned right on this picture there is another problem with it. Can you guess what it is?
Too late! We are at my next tip!
2.If it fits, fit it. If it doesn’t, don’t… (yes I did just write that down)
If you have sharp eyes you probably noticed on the picture above, that the gate is not fully in the picture all tough it could’ve fitted in.
You will not be able to fit every little thing into a picture, but if you have a second powerful subject next to the main one, make sure both of them are in the picture.
The gate in the background is a powerful element of the photo. People usually first look at the person, than the biggest object, and it can be really bothering if something is just slightly missing from the picture.
Or I’m just too picky… could be.
This is another example of this tip in the use, but there is something else that makes it possible to fit this building in the picture.
The next tip!
3.Play with perspective
Trying different angles can be hard, but the trick to it is to take as many photos as possible while shifting angles, because you don’t know which one will be the moment you aimed to catch.
Playing with perspective brings a creative touch to your photos and you might find an angle you never though about before!
We found this perspective by trying out more, and this is the one we went with later. We took other photos though, because there are some details a didn’t like about this one.
Have you ever felt like everything would be perfect with a picture, but you discovered a small detail that you didn’t like and it totally ruined the whole thing?
Well that’s what we are going to talk about next.
4.Pay attention to details and communicate!
See the problem with the picture above are a few things. 1, The book isn’t fully in the picture 2, the sunshine could be in a better place (which is easily achievable if I move a little) 3, my watch is on, which you probably didn’t even realize, but this is an example that when you are looking at a picture of yourself that you want to share on Social Media, you are going to be judging harder than Gordon Ramsey for TV.
The person who is going to take the photos of you won’t know what is important to you. Give him/her a list of the things that are most commonly misplaced on a photo. Here is what I usually tell them to pay attention to:
- My hair
- Clothes
- Smile
- Shadows
- Accessories
Take only a handful of things, because for a newbie in photography it’s really hard to pay attention to everything, but you can add new things as they are getting better.
When I tried my dress on for the waltz we had to dance in school I wanted a natural look in contrast to the fancy white dress and we had to pay attention to my hair in order to achieve that.
On this picture you can see that we were not using the rule of thirds, because I wanted the attention to be on the subject fully. Let’s talk about how to achieve that!
5.Symmetry
It’s great to use symmetry on your photos when 1, you are taking photos with architectural environment 2, want to put the sportlight on the person or 3, when you want to combine the two (like on the picture below).
There are 3 rules to follow when shooting these photos:
1.Find the place where (for example) a building is on the middle
2.Align the grid with the environment. Vertical lines should be parallel with the walls or lines of the building (like the windows), horizontal lines should be parallel with the ground and the top of the building. To make sure the cropping is good you can either zoom out a little and crop the image later. Or zoom in for a better perspective, but pay attention to position everything equally in the image. That’s how you will achieve symmetry.
3.Put the subject in the middle
It’s really freakin hard to take symmetrical pictures especially for someone who is not a professional photographer, but you can definitely achieve something like this with the tips above.
6.Horizontal line crossing the eye
This is a trick I’ve heard on TikTok but honestly it’s really useful!
Positioning can be one of the biggest struggles of newbies when taking photos because they just can’t seem to leave enough space above the head or next to the subject.
Tell them to make sure the top horizontal line has to always cross your eyes which will leave enough space for you everywhere and you can even crop if you are not satisfied with the portions.
As you can see when the line is crossing my eyes, it leaves me enough space to crop the image the way I like it. If there is one tip you should take away from my blog post, it’s this one. I promise you life’s gonna be so much easier!
7.Use the zoom!
Don’t be afraid to use that zoom! It’s there for a reason!
Zooming on a picture can create another type of perspective too. Since some phone lenses can distort a picture zooming in and out can give you a whole bunch of different looks.
Use it wisely though, because it can damage the quality of the image. I recommend playing around with it and making tons of photos. Also we created these pictures for demonstration and as you can see the lighting is not the best which will bring the quality further down.
Thank you so much for reading this little school about how to train your Instagram Husband, or Instagram friend… or Insta Family. Or if you are just a random person who wants to know a little more about photography.
I hope I brought some value to your life today and if you enjoyed this post I would appreciate if you could browse around a little more here in my little Paradise, you might find something else that you are interested in.
