Did you know that customers form their first impression within 50 milliseconds? That’s under one second! As more brands use social media to connect with their customers, it has become more important than ever to have strong, high-quality imagery for your brand to stand out on social media. Here are our top tips for highly effective photography.

Shooting on location

Having good composition can take your images to a whole new level. It allows you to take control of how the viewer experiences your images. Using lines creates direction, using space centers your subject. Here are our tips for shooting on location for a product or a general social media campaign:

The most commonly used method in photography is the rule of thirds. The idea behind the method is that the image gets divided into three equal parts split horizontally and vertically which creates a grid with nine squares and four intersecting lines. Have a look at the elements most important in your shot and place them at the intersection points of the grid lines.

There is a possibility that shooting when the sun is high can make everything appear overlit and flat because the colour can appear pretty dull.  Having the sun high in the sky and cloudy weather is a great way for softening the light for portraits.

A popular term in Photography is the ‘Golden Hour’ –  this refers to shooting just after sunrise and just before sunset. Because of the sun, everything becomes cast in a golden palette and creates long shadows that bring everything to life. The light you get at sunrise and sunset can be used to create a soft tone to your images.

Neon lighting during the night can be used to create a striking and urban looking image. Try using different colours and shooting on the RAW option on your camera to get the most out of the colours.

White/negative space is a concept used in design, photography and art referring to the space around the subject of your image. White space emphasises the main subject of a photo or image, drawing the viewer’s eyes to it. It also makes sure your photo/image is not too cluttered and noisy looking, giving the viewer’s eyes somewhere to rest when viewing your work.

Lines are one of the most impactful ways of drawing viewers attention to your photo. Lines can be used to lead a viewer’s eye to the subject of your image and to then keep their focus. Lines can also be used to create moods to evoke emotional responses. For example, using horizontal lines in imagery has been known to create a sense of homeostasis (lack of change).

Editing

Photoshop has been the go-to application for photographers everywhere since it’s first release in 1990. Since then it’s become a lot more clever in the way it functions. However, Adobe has built an application purely for photographers. Lightroom cc has a built-in tutorial system allowing new users to discover its features such as changing the light, colour and the healing tools at their own pace.

A free alternative to Lightroom is Skylum’s Luminar. Luminar uses AI which uses revolutionary human-ware technology to enhance portrait photography. Their AI is also content-aware which can detect areas that could look richer and enhances them.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with colour. Is your photo trying to create a chilling atmosphere but it looks too warm? Try enhancing the blues in your picture to create a colder effect. You can also reduce saturation from colours in a photo to tone down their impact.

If a tripod isn’t an option and you want to reduce motion blur in your photos, you can always edit out motion blur using shake reductions tools in the editing software of your choice. Alternatively, if you decide you’d like to create a sense of movement in your image, you can add motion blur in during your editing process.

Have you found our photography tips useful? Let us know by getting in touch with us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.