Use one or all of these tips and you’ll be on your way to professional results. Your family and friends will be impressed with your creativity.
If you decide to hire a professional photographer, you’ll have a start for collaborating with her for the best results.
🕺 Tip 1: Is Your Photo Striking? Does your picture make viewers stop in their tracks when scrolling social media? Accomplishing this is not easy. The tips in this article will help you create images that viewers want to take a closer look at.
🧚♀️ Tip 2: Is the Photo Creative? Getting stuck with the same poses and perspective will not make your social media posts stop viewers. Hand on hips, hip jutting out, head tilted to an impossible position for the average human are all so passe. You want something that you haven’t seen million times before.
💃 Tip 3: How Is Color Being Used? Color is an essential factor. It will impact mood and brings focus to where you want the viewer to look. When I work with clients, we talk about color themes to make harmonious portraits. Color also separates your subject from any distracting backgrounds.
☀️ Tip 4: Does It Use The Best Lighting Available? Lighting can play a huge role in your photos. It will draw the focus to your subject. Hot sun in your subject’s face is a photo killer, the same thing if the light is behind unless you have a reflector or artificial lights. Filtered sun is good. Sunset is gorgeous with the right angle from where the light is.
🔄 Tip 5: Does the Composition Direct the Viewer’s Eye to Your Focal Point? Where is the focus you want to capture? Centering the subject isn’t always the best layout. Having your subject offset from the center works, particularly if you know how to use bokeh for the background.
⚾️ Tip 6: How Does Story Play a Role in the Photo? If you want to get really creative, design a story and plan the shoot around that. For instance, if you have a daughter who is into baseball, you could add a uniform, a bat and a ball, do poses in the locker room, have her walking to the diamond, catch her swinging a bat.
That tells an exciting story of who she is.
Your viewers have already seen her in a dozen party dresses.
🌎 Tip 7: Does the Location Add Intrigue or Story to the Photo? The location can be as important as the poses, lighting, color etc. It is a key ‘prop’ in creating the story I mention in Tip 6.
My special client over the past 12 years has always been open to new and different locations. We’ve done a wall of photos with not one pose, clothing, or location duplicated over the years. (See my blog about the best 15 photo locations in the Phoenix area.)
😍 Tip 8: Does Your Subject Pop? Make your subject ‘pop’ with position, color and light.
👨👩👧👦 👨❤️👨 👩👦👦 Tip 9: Can You Put It All Together? Some of these tips are a little advanced. If you’re a creative individual and even if you’re not, there are tips that you can implement.
Try one tip at a time. You’ll have fun. You’ll find something new and exciting.
Who knows, you may even become a talented photographer yourself.
Linda Kazares, author