How I take and edit blog photos

Hey loveliesss
Welcome back, I hope you’re all warm and well ♥

Blog photo’s are something I’ve always tried to work hard on because that’s an area I feel I struggle with most and while I’m by no means a professional photographer, I do think I’ve stepped up my blog photography game since starting back in September ’16. I thought it’d be a nice idea to share with you some of the tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way.

BACKGROUND
We’ve all seen those pretty flatlays with pure white backgrounds, a marble effect pattern or a soft fluffy backing and they look pretty great right? Note how most bloggers photo’s have a mainly light backing, it really helps the products your taking photo’s of stand out. I ran around my house trying to find something to use as a backing and I had nothing, so it was time to improvise. When I began focusing more on my blog photo’s, all I used for a background was a piece of A4 plain paper. Pretty simple and it worked okay-ish for a short time, although with bigger items it was a nightmare. I spoke to a few of my blogger friends on twitter and asked for tips on backgrounds, and so many of them recommended using marble sticky back plastic. So, that’s what I done. I picked up a 4 meter roll from B&Q for around £6 so it’s pretty reasonable and to this day, I still use it (Because not everyone lives in a fancy house with marble counter tops) It’s worked pretty well for me but because I haven’t stored it properly it’s become a bit creased which is a pain.

LIGHTING
The perfect lighting makes for a perfect picture. I always use as much natural sun light as possible because it doesn’t tend to give my photo’s a coloured tone to them. I don’t have room to store (or money to afford) professional lighting set ups so I gotta deal with what I’ve got. I know that the best lighting in my flat is between the times of 10.30am and around midday. I get my marble backing set up in front of my living room window which seems to be the lightest part of my home. I avoid using the camera flash because it seems to wash out some of my pictures and it doesn’t end up looking like a true representation of the actual products I’m photographing.

PROPS 
You can use literally anything you have laying around as a blog prop if it’s relevant to the image. There’s a big blogger trend of using pretty rose gold items and tiny little plants, while they look super cute, I’ve never experimented with the trend but maybe I will in future. I love using flowers in my photo’s and I think they can add a nice pop of colour, softness and be a great space filler. The flowers I use are artificial from Wilkos. They have a great selection in my local store and I’ve got a few different ones to choose from and play around with. I quite light using fairy lights too and I’ve played around with them recently. I picked up a small set from Primark’s home selection and they’re quite cute to add in the background.

LAYOUT
This is the thing that takes me the longest. I spend ages fiddling around with the position of different products to ensure there’s a balance between bigger/smaller items. There’s really no rules here just play around with different layouts until you’re happy and snap your picture.

EDITING.
In terms of editing, I don’t really do that much to my pictures because I don’t want to alter anything to much. I use the built in photo editing app on my phone to adjust the lighting/exposure levels, bump up the contrast a bit and sharpen the photo. Sometimes I crop my photo’s too if there’s any blank space around the image. In a recent post I played around with a camera app that blurs the background of photo’s and focuses on one more forward item, I quite liked that effect. You can add different filters and such like but being a beauty blogger I feel it doesn’t show the products for the shades that they are, which is kinda what you guys wanna see right? There are loads of different apps to download and edit photo’s with, try and few out and just go with what works best for you.
BEFORE

AFTER 

There are so many different ways to take your photo’s, no way is right or wrong just go with what you think looks good, have a play around and you’ll learn a lot along the way. This is my little post on how I personally take my photo’s and as I previously said, I’m no professional and I still have loads of learning to do. Have fun with it and enjoy it, that’s what blogging is all about.

Thanks for being here
Kisses and Love
Jazziepickles
xoxo