Hello! I’m so excited to be here today with you while Miss Ashley is busy moving. My name is Lish and I blog over at Imprintalish.
My blog is a lifestyle blog with a focus on raising my two little boys. Imprintalish is loaded with photos and tales of our life. I love supporting the handmade community like Etsy and am crazy over Pinterest! (who isn’t these days?!). I also share crafts and tutorials, plus anything pretty that catches my eye. So don’t be shy…I would love for you to pop over and introduce yourself!
Today I am going to be sharing some photography tips with you. These tips are just things I’ve picked up along the way and learnt through trial and error. I am in no way a professional nor have I had any formal training/education, other then a course in college (which I don’t remember at all)! I think that good photography is not about having a expensive camera, or mad editing skills…it helps, but it’s more then that, what you need is an eye and a passion for it. For me photography is about having fun and capturing memories, it’s a creative way to tell a story. If your taking photos for your own personal use, go nuts, do whatever you want. Sometimes that blurry photo of your kids running through the kitchen or the grainy photo of them hiding under a blanket is what makes it special. You caught the moment. You weren’t thinking about lightning and posing, and that’s ok. But if you are posting your photos on a blog or website then I think more time and attention should be put into your photos.
So here are my top 5 tips for taking beautiful ‘blogworthy’ photos
1. Turn off your flash. You will get much more natural looking photos without your flash on.
2. Use natural light (sun, window) whenever possible. Remember that if the sun is behind your subject, they will appear dark and shadowy. If you are standing with your back to the sun your shadow will be in the shot and if taking photos of people they will be squinting-not attractive. Off center your subjects to the sun, or play up it up by including the suns rays into your photo.
3. Look for contrasting colors in your surroundings.
4. Macro it. You now that little flower button on your camera. Use it. It’s great for getting real close and taking nice sharp photos. It can also make your photos look like you know what your doing. Get real close to say, a flower, now angle your camera to the left or right or up a bit. See all that nice fuzzy stuff in the background, but the flower is in focus? Yep, that’s what you want!!
5. Take your camera with you everywhere, you never know when the perfect shot will surface.
This photo combines the natural light/sunlight with contrasting colors and the macro setting. |
The bonus with digital cameras is you can take a million photos…and maybe only 25 are good. Imagine back in ‘the day’ when you actually had a role of film in your camera?! There is so much creative freedom that comes with a digital camera and I am all for embracing it! So when you find your ‘money’ shot, the fun can begin! I use Photoshop for editing my photos, so all of the technical stuff below might have to be adjusted if you use another program.
These are my top 5 photo tricks:
1. Adjust the contrast-This is usually the first edit I do to my photos. It just crisps everything up a bit, and if it looks too harsh you can fade it out a bit.
BEFORE |
AFTER |
2. Black and White- Everyone knows this one and it is such an easy edit. Depending on your photo editing software, just convert your image to black and white or Desaturate your colors. In a more advanced program like Photoshop, you can play with the contrast, shadows and exposure. Turning a colored photo into black and white is a great option for a photo that was ‘over flashed’, grainy or horribly colored like the one below.
3. Rounded corners-Pretty easy to do as long as your familiar with Layers in Photoshop. This is the video I used to find out how.
4. Sizing-I prefer large photos on a blog, I’m a visual person and often will scan through a blog looking at the ‘pretty’ things first. If you have small photos, I probably won’t stay long. SOOC (straight out of camera) your photos are probably about 4000 pixels wide Ideally, your photos should be around 450-600 pixels wide for web viewing. I always resize mine to 600 pixels wide on my blog.
5. Photoshop Actions-Seriously, I had no idea these existed till about 3 months ago! Now I can’t live without them. For those of you with Photoshop (Full or Elements) all you have to do is goggle ‘free photoshop actions.’ My favorites are Clean Edit and Soft Vintage. The best one though is this Eye Action. I used the Eye Action and the Clean Edit Action on the photo below (my husband thinks their eyes look creepy-I think it looks cool!)
Oh, and one last tip…I can’t remember where I read this but it’s a good one! When your taking photos for all your DIY and tutorial posts, try to take them in daylight and use a whiteboard behind your supplies and while your working…your photos will be so clear and crisp! This is one tip that I am working on perfecting…it’s hard especially since most of my craft time is at night while little people sleep!! So that’s it, thanks for having me over to play Ashley! It was lots of fun! :)
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Thank you so much for these awesome tips Lish! Photography is something I love and enjoy. But my main problem is that I too work a lot at night so I don’t get the natural light very often (which is definitely better than your kitchen at 2am!!!)
Lish says
Looks great Ashley! Thanks for having me :)
Great advice – thanks!
Great tips!! Thanks for sharing!!
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