5 Blog Photography Tips

For the last few months I’ve been an Adobe Elements Ambassador sharing some ideas for photography and photo editing. Today I’m sharing 5 photography tips that I’ve found useful as a blogger. I’m not a photographer but I have spent a lot of time behind the camera in photographing images for the blog. Here are a few tips I’ve learned along the way, I’d love to hear your ideas as well!

1.Waiting for the best soft light. Figure out where the best light is in your house. It may take a few days to see what areas look best in sun, shadow, or rain. I’ve found that my living room gets great light in the morning, my kitchen midday and my sunroom in the later afternoon/early evening. Lately, the sunroom (which is my favorite spot to shoot) is getting great light at like 7pm, which seems nuts! It’s worth it to wait until the best, soft light to take your photos. Sometimes I’ll finish a project and then wait hours for the light to be just perfect.

2. Try re-creating an image (Image above from Sweet Paul Magazine). I learned this trick from taking Nicole’s Tabletop class. She had suggested working on your photography by finding a beautiful image in a magazine and trying to copy it. Maybe you won’t have the same objects, but paying attention to the light, props and placement can help a lot in your own shoots.

Keep reading for three more tips…

3. Strategically placed props. This watermelon image below is a good example of this. Although the focus was on the watermelon slush, I thought pieces of watermelon, seeds and rinds would be good objects to have in the background and going off the corners of the photos. For food photography especially I like using things that make up the object you’re photographing so readers have a good idea from the main image what you’re making.

5. Lighten and increase contrast and saturation. This is a really quick photo-editing trick to help your photos pop a bit more.

Here are some instructions on how to do this in Adobe Elements:

A. Open up your image and select ‘quick’ on the upper right hand corner

B. Then adjust the shadows, midtones and a bit of saturation (just a teeny tiny bit). You can also push that auto contrast button to see if that helps as well.

4. Trying another angle. For blog images, I often will take several final shots from different angles to get a different perspective, texture and focus on different parts of the object. It has helped me a lot in paying more attention to composition.

Comments

Thanks so much for this! We just got a dslr and I’m just loving the instant change in quality of photos, but still have SO much to learn. It’s so true about the right light. I find light will often make or break a picture

Great tips, especially the one about re-creating an image! I shoot most of my photos in the backyard, and I find that using levels really helps the colors to pop!

Thank you so much for sharing these great tips. You’ve inspired me to stop using my phone to take pictures for my blog (because it’s more convenient) and start using my good camera. It really makes all the difference.

Thank you for sharing these great tips. Can you please share what kind of camera you use?

Thank you!

Thank you so much for some great tips! I am trying to make the switch from my iPhone to a ‘proper’ camera so these will come in handy 🙂

Great tips! I love editing my photos. I have an old version of Photoshop, but it does the trick. I won’t put my photos on my blog unless I’ve played around the curves, levels, and a little bit of saturation.
~Sara
sarastrauss.blogspot.com

I’d say that, based on the last two photos, having a VERY cute child is a great photography tip too!

thanks! that was helpful. admitedly i do not really do much of any photo editing on the computer. lazy i know. i loved all the ideas though!

oooh awesome tips, thank you! In my north-facing apartment I have to position everything right by the window in the early morning to get any kind of natural light on my props. It makes for some interesting maneuvers!

I have discovered that my parents’ swing set at sunset is the perfect light, lol! If I happen to be there with something I have to photograph, I hardly have to do any editing.

On the Alt Summit blog a while ago, on one of the posts about photos, there was a link to a post about two quick edits in PSE that make a huge difference. You make 2 duplicates of the background layer, and set one to “Screen” and one to “Soft Light” in the layers menu. Screen makes everything brighter and Soft Light makes the colors really rich and deep. And you just adjust the opacity of each until the whole thing looks perfect. That link has totally changed the way I edit photos!

Thank you so much for these tips. I admire your work so much and appreciate the help. Too bad good light and nap time don’t always go hand in hand 🙂

these are all great tips! i am always trying to find more unique ways to photograph a project so readers are drawn into what i’m talking about…i love the last photo…it’s amazing what a small difference it makes in the angle…it really draws your attention towards the little beans! haha.

thanks for sharing!

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