Photography Tips & Tricks

Hey Beauties! Since starting this little design series here on my blog I've gotten so many questions about 'blog photography' - mainly how I take mine and what they could do to improve theres and so forth. I've already done a whole post about how I take my images and edit them and so forth, so I'll link that here. But recently I was scrolling through some blogs and I found the wonderful and amazing Lucie, who runs and owns Hummingbird and the Rose. She so graciously decided to help me out with this post and provide some of her tips and tricks with everyone. So its almost like you get two posts in one. I'll be sharing my tips and tricks and she will be sharing hers. She has some awesome ideas and some awesome talent so I highly recommend going and checking out her blog and social media outlets to find out what I'm raving about. So without further ado, here are some tips and tricks that you all can use to take, improve and work on your photography skills.

Krystal's Tips & Tricks:

CAMERA: You don't need to invest in a $1000 camera just to take blog photography. All I use is a Canon Powershot Digital Camera that cost me $100 dollars about five or six years ago. I just like to play around with the 'manual' settings on it to make sure to color is right and the brightness is set to what I like. I also make the most of the 'macro' mode when shooting images because I find it gives me the clearest pictures. Just play around with your camera and images until you find something that suits your style and theme your going for.

PHOTOSHOP: One of the biggest things I've been asked is 'Is it okay to edit your images?" and the answer will always be YES! You actually should be editing your images. Chances are if you take 500 images only one of those comes out looking absolutely perfect. So make the most of editing, wither it be with PicMonkey or Photoshop or just an Instagram filter. I do also want to say with this though that its very easy to over edit a photo and that is something you should be cautious of when editing blog photography. Because people really want to see the true colors of products and clearness in your images.

BACKGROUND: I don't use props or objects in my background for the simple fact that my camera tends to focus on those rather than what I actually want to photograph. I've found a really easy solution - scrapbook paper. You can always use scrapbook paper, your bed, wallpaper samples or magazines as blog photography backgrounds. The idea with doing this though is to make sure the product your photography doesn't clash with the background that your using. I tend to like to keep about ten different backgrounds on hand for the different products that I might be photographing. All of these have worked really well for my blog and this has helped me create an overall style. Your viewers will get used to these backgrounds and photos and when they see your images they will kno that there yours..

Lucie's Tips & Tricks

TAKE PHOTOS IN BULK: This is a great time-saver for me as I work full-time alongside my blog, so to know I have a collection of photos all ready to go means I can schedule my posts for the week and not have to worry about it. It also means my photos have some consistency to them, as in a similar background and lighting set up. I like to try to keep the same theme running through my photos of the light, blurry background (with the obligatory candle of course) and the product clearly in focus.

TRY TO USE NATURAL LIGHT: For me as a beauty blogger, natural light is essential to ensure that the colors show as true to life as possible, and it makes my photos look so bright and clean. If it's a gloomy day I'll tweak the settings on my camera to compensate, by adjusting the exposure it makes the photo brighter.

LEARN YOUR CAMERA: It's really important if you want your blog photos to be the best they can be, I'll alternate between my DSLR for product photos and my iPhone 6 for showing the product on my face/skin. I don't think it's essential to have a DSLR at all, I only have mine as it was a gift but I get some amazing shots with my iPhone. It's all about trying different set ups, lighting and angles.

BE ORIGINAL: I love the look of white floorboards, with flowers and rose gold accents but it's not something I could recreate with what I have available to me, and I like to think that if someone saw my photos elsewhere they'd know it was me by the style and composition. 

I hope you learned something from these photography tips and tricks and I hope that you all go and visit Lucie over on her blog. We wanted to keep things pretty basic with this post that everyone can understand and do and because these are all things that really work for us. If you have anymore tips or tricks or have done a post like this please leave it linked below as I would really like to take a look at them. I'm also always open to improving upon my photography skills to help improve myself as a blogger! Also let me know if you are enjoying these design relation posts her on Little Beauty Bug and what you would be interested in seeing next ? :)