The average Instagram user will take out their smartphone and snap a couple of selfies for their channel. However, you will never amaze people if you take the same quality photos as everyone else. You need to make your Instagram photos stand out from the majority of the content on the platform. That is how you increase traffic and gain more followers to your channel.
The good news is that you don’t need to become a professional photographer to learn how to make high-quality Instagram photos. All you need to know are a few necessary skills related to capturing and editing photos. It won’t even require you to purchase any expensive camera equipment either.
When you finish improving your Instagram photos’ appearance, you should buy followers for Instagram for those posts. The likes will increase the rank of your posts on the Instagram Feed. People will start to discover your posts for the first time, and hopefully, they’ll get converted into loyal followers. It is the basic formula for how to generate organic traffic to Instagram photos.
Fantastic photography is the best way to grow your channel. You could buy all the likes and followers in the world, but you’ll never build a loyal audience without some creativity and talent too.
Below are the top 7 ways to make your Instagram photos shine. Once you’ve implemented these techniques into your photo content, your photo metrics will see a significant boost.
1) Change the Camera Settings on Your Phone
Every smartphone camera app has at least a few picture settings available. These settings allow you to change how a photo is captured. Sometimes it’ll even let you edit the photos after they get captured. If you know how to utilize these settings correctly, you can enhance your photos’ quality without needing additional equipment or accessories.
Do not assume that maximum brightness will make a photo look better. Too much lighting will hide certain features of the scene. There needs to be a healthy blend of lightning and darkness to capture all the features correctly. If you already have a bright environment, you should turn off the flash on the camera. In fact, it is better to use external lighting sources rather than depending on the phone’s lighting source.
The overall idea is to use fewer resources from the camera. Do not use the autofocus or HDR settings. They will make your photos appear overprocessed rather than authentically captured. If you use a special tripod to hold your smartphone in place, you won’t need to worry about focusing or capturing a clear picture. Again, it depends on the situation and the timing of the scene you want to snap.
The Instagram app comes with impressive photo filter settings. In some cases, these filters can make a picture look so much better. However, it doesn’t mean you should always use filters for every picture you take. There are good times to use filters, and there are bad times to use them. If you have a tripod and plenty of natural lighting, you shouldn’t need to apply any filter settings.
2) Consider the Position of Your Phone
People tend to snap photographs by holding their phone vertically upright. It makes sense because we all look at our phones in this same position. Unfortunately, it is not a position that captures the best quality images. There are two other positions which you consider using instead.
First, try holding your phone horizontally rather than vertically when you take a picture. You’ll capture more scenery from a wider angle because you won’t have those black bars on the sides of your photos. Every time you hold your phone vertically, it captures a narrower photo with more height than width. Unless something interesting is happening on the ceiling or in the sky, hold the phone horizontally to take a picture.
If you must capture a vertical shot, then you should hold the phone upside down. Since most smartphones have their cameras integrated into the upper rear area, flipping them upside down would position the camera toward the ground. When you snap a photo from this angle, the camera will capture the foreground elements more clearly. All the people and objects will have more depth and clarity than the background elements.
3) Stage the Scene
Staging the scene is the best chance you’ll have of capturing the most memorable photos for Instagram. People who pull out their phones and quickly snap photos will never amaze anyone. You should take the time to set up the scene correctly. Think about where you want to take the photos and what you want to show in the environment.
Ask yourself some critical questions. Do you want to have an indoor or outdoor shot? Which objects or items would enhance the scene better? Anyone captured in the photos should dress accordingly. Perhaps you could have them wear a specific fashion brand or clothing type that projects a particular feeling in people.
Then, of course, there is the whole lighting situation. Staging the scene gives you power over the amount of lighting in the environment. You won’t be dependent on the camera’s flash lighting, which usually distorts the image quality. You could add LED lights throughout the room if it is an indoor or nighttime shot. Do whatever is necessary to make the scene as easy to capture as possible.
4) Write Clever Photo Captions and Hashtags
Clever captions can make your photos appear better to your audience. So many Instagram users tend to ignore photo captions because they figure the photo is everything. But a clever caption underneath a photo can grab people’s attention just the same.
A caption could be an interesting question or fact about the photo. You’ll want to get people to think more about the photo so that they will pay attention to every last detail of it. You can use hashtags for this purpose too. If people see certain tags or captions used to describe the image, they will think about the photo differently.
5) Use Third-Party Apps
You’re not required to use the Instagram app for all your photo editing and filtering needs. You have the freedom to use any third-party app that you want to use. The Instagram app offers basic filters and features, but why settle for less? There are so many third-party apps that provide better options for adding filters and effects to your photos.
For instance, the InShot app allows users to crop their photos to fit Instagram’s required vertical aspect ratio. The app also lets you add text, effects, filters, emojis and GIF animations to your photos as well. There is even a video editor in the app if you plan to upload a video to Instagram.
Sometimes you can make photos look better when presented in a collage format. The mobile app, PicPlayPost, lets users create a beautiful collage with the photos and videos they want to upload. It is the perfect app for Instagram Stories because each photo can tell a particular part of a story. If you already have the photos on your phone, just run the app and let it do all the work for you.
Are you someone who has no skills in photo editing whatsoever? Don’t worry because there is an app that lets you send your photos to a professional editor. Mendr is one of the most original photo editing apps on the internet. Rather than edit Instagram photos yourself, you can pay a professional photo editor to edit your photos quickly. Their prices are affordable, and the work is of commercial quality.
6) Use the Grid Feature
Do you ever use the grid feature on your smartphone camera app? Most people don’t because they think it blocks the scenery in the viewfinder. However, the grid feature can help you to improve the positioning and centering of your pictures. If you have a particular subject to capture, you will position them in the middle of the grid on the viewfinder. That is how you’ll know the subject is centered for the shot.
The best photos have perfectly aligned elements. A grid is an excellent asset for aligning all the elements in your shot before snapping a picture. They consist of two vertical lines and two horizontal lines spread out from each other. Think of a grid as a Tic-Tac-Toe board because it is the same design. If you center the subject in the middle square on the grid, then it will be centered for the picture.
Grids can assist you with photo cropping too. If you have unwanted elements somewhere on the top, bottom, left, or right side of your photo, it could crop those areas of the picture to eliminate the elements. Just follow the grid lines to ensure the cropping is done evenly.
7) Quality is Everything
When all is said and done, you must upload the best quality photos possible. Many Instagram users feel pressured to upload dozens of photos every day because they want to keep their followers engaged.
Unfortunately, this could have the opposite effect. People don’t want to waste their time viewing poor quality photos. If you have a habit of snapping selfies and scenery shots quickly, it might decrease followers and views. Quick shots without edits will look blurry, distorted and sloppy. No one wants to waste time watching them.
On the other hand, if you upload one high-quality photo per day, it will increase engagement and viewership. You’ll keep viewers on the edge of their seats, waiting for you to upload a new photo. If they know they have something good to wait for, they won’t mind waiting for it.
What is a high-quality photo? Well, it involves everything that discussed already. It would help if you staged the scene with more natural lighting, centering the subject, removing unwanted elements and things like that. But there is one more factor worth discussing, which is the niche of your Instagram channel.
People follow Instagram channels because they like their particular brand of content. You cannot upload photos about random topics or niches. A loyal audience expects your photos to be about one specific niche only. Even if you produce a high-quality image of something, it won’t “Wow” your audience if they’re not interested in the niche.
Therefore, make sure you establish a niche for your Instagram channel. Then continue to upload quality photos relating to the niche. It is a guaranteed way to keep your loyal followers happy and engaged with your channel and its content.
Conclusion
Give yourself some time to practice your photo editing, filter, and capturing skills. You won’t need to become a commercial photographer to learn these skills. Just give yourself some time and patience to perfect your strategy. As you receive more positive feedback from people, you will know that you’re doing a good job.
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