Having a beautiful Instagram feed is not just the work of filters and photo-editing apps. It all starts with the way you take a photo. And your best bet is to take photos that are as aligned and as plain as possible, with lots of natural lighting (no flash allowed!) Scroll the likes of any popular Instagrammer and you’ll find these five common compositions, and they’re fairly easy to do:
Top-down shots
Be it your coffee, your breakfast (along with your friend’s breakfast), your dog, your travel items (always arrange these to form a grid of some sort), top-down shots work for just about anything and everything. Just make sure you’ve got plenty of natural light from the window, and that there’s no shadow of your hands taking the photo. A decorative background – most commonly wood – helps.
Plain background minimalism
For the more common straight-up shot, always do so with the plainest background you can find. Less is more, after all. It can be a painted wall, a brick wall, or even a shutter – but just keep it plain. It’s sort of like de-cluttering your photos. Just make sure the photo is aligned and you’ve got yourself an Insta-likeable photo.
Don’t look at the camera
OOTDs work well with minimalist, plain wall shots. In some cases – say you’re on a holiday of some sort – an open field or a cliff edge can serve as your backdrop. Stay away from selfies, because the trend now is for fuller body shots. Looking away from the camera adds a sort-of candid feature to your photo, like as if you’ve been caught in the act of, well, doing life. Not sure how to pose? Just fiddle with your sunnies, tuck your hair behind your ear, smoke a cigarette, or just ponder life while you glance outwards longingly.
Cut-off shots
Here’s where the sort-of artsy, creative element comes in. It’s sort-of like zooming into a specific point that you want to lay focus on. Turns out that your whole head doesn’t need to be in the shot – neither does your whole cup of coffee, nor your entire waffle. The idea is to present a focus and create intrigue – you may find this evident in many an advertisement.
Empty backgrounds
Also part of “decluttering” the photo, try to shy away from crowds. While the presence of people in the distance can appear rather artistic, it’s understandable that if you want the focus to be on you or your subject, you don’t want random strangers to throw off the perfect shot. This works more for wanderlusters, of course, because most of us wouldn’t want the typical touristy shot that everyone else is taking.
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