HOW TO TAKE GREAT PHOTOS FOR YOUR BLOG

. TOP TIPS FOR STYLE PHOTOGRAPHY .

Photography is such a craft and an art, there really is no right and wrong to shooting the ‘perfect’ photo in my humble opinion. For me photography is something you master and develop as you go, learning how to use your camera is probably the first step in the process but really playing around and practicing over time is the key to improving your photography. If you look at my old photo’s you’ll see some absolutely horrendous shots, terrible composition, totally out of focus & completely strained faces as I attempt to strut around and take ‘natural’ looking photos on my tripod. If anything it’s the terrible array of photo’s on my blog that were a key driver in making me want to learn more and improve my imagery.

The last year or so has been a whirlwind photography masterclass with many (many) hours spent researching tips online, googling the meaning of depth of field and trying to work out the relationship between shutter-speed & ISO. Seriously, I’ve read goodness knows how many books, websites & watched a ton of tutorial videos to try and gain a better understanding of how to take the pictures I want (in fact if you want a deep dive, you can find all of my tutorials on photography that I’ve written since this post here, which go into great depth and are much more advanced than this).

I’m a little bit of an obsessive, and learning how to take a good photo has been a major obsessions over the last 12 months. I’ve found myself continually looking into the composition of images I love, collating the photos that inspire me & testing out various settings on my own kit. The fascination only heightened as I became more focused on my blog quality, content wise as well as design (you’ll have noticed a lot has changed on mediamarmalade.com over the last two years). There was no place for a bad photo any longer and as of January this year, when I invested in the dream camera (my Canon 5DIII), I decided it was about time I actually learnt what I was doing.

Now what I won’t harp on about in this post is what kit you should use, I see fabulous photos shot with an iphone, so even though I invested in a beast of a DSLR you truly don’t need to spend a fortune to take a good photo. Most point and shoots these days allow you to shoot in manual & half the time a beautiful photo is as much about the composition, styling & location as the sharpness & depth of field.

However for those of you that are interested, here’s my camera evolution: it all started with a simple digital camera taking basic shots with no true vision back when I started my blog, after a few months of dedicated blogging (and a better understanding of the images I wanted to feature) I invested in my first DSLR the Canon D500 (an absolutely fab starter DSLR), then my first lens, the extremely good value and quality Canon 50mm F1.8 (I loved this lens for it’s ease of use and depth of field), this was followed by the 50mm F1.4 once the F1.8 broke (it’s great value is only countered by it’s infamous breaking, so I decided to upgrade). I then upgraded my Canon to a full frame, and since I invested in my beastly 5D Mark III it has changed my photography world. (2018 Update: I still shoot on my Canon, but now with 35mm, 50mm and 85mm 1.2 lenses).

Anyway, it’s not about the kit, as I said, this is more my tips and tricks for getting great outfit posts for your blog, in the most time efficient way possible (we don’t all have full time photographers at our disposal unfortunately). As always, this is by no means the ‘right way’, simply how I like to do things.

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. MASTER ISO, APERTURE & SHUTTER SPEED .

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This is probably the most important thing to master (i’ve also written an updated and very in depth post here where you can learn everything you need to know). It’s also probably the trickiest thing too, this has genuinely taken me months of testing, reading up on & watching tutorials to work out, but i’d say i’ve now got a pretty good understanding of what combinations I need in certain light conditions.

The technical side of photography can be a little overwhelming, but it’s super important to understand, because the relationship between ISO, shutter speed & aperture is what helps create the perfect photo. Here’s a quick summary of what each of them are, but importantly how they all work together …

ISO

In it’s simplest form this is about sensitivity to light. The higher the ISO the more light let in, the lower the ISO the less light let in. Simples. For daytime style photography the trick here is having the lowest ISO possible, because the higher you have it the more grainy your images will look (it’ll capture more noise). If you’re shooting outside on a sunny day you might even be able to get down to around 100 – 200 ISO, this is the sort of ISO I try and shoot at.

SHUTTER SPEED:

This is quite simply the speed in which the shutter opens & shuts and effects the amount of light let in (the exposure time). The higher the shutter speed (e.g. 1/3500) the less light let in but the sharper the image because it’s a quick action shot. The lower the shutter speed (e.g. 1/100) the more light let in but the grainer and less sharp your image will be as a result.  If you’re shooting with a low ISO like 100 and you’re shooting outside in the daylight, you’ll want a high shutter speed like 1/2500 this will give you the perfect light balance and ensure your photo has great sharpness and exposure. Equally if you’re shooting in a dark location or at night or even on a cloudy day, you’ll need to up your ISO and equally drop your shutter speed to allow as much light in as possible (it’s all a balancing act).

When it comes to capturing the perfect picture, aperture also has to be thrown into the mix …

APERTURE:

The balancing act is always in making sure your photo is perfectly exposed (ISO / Aperture) but also sharp and focussed (Shutter speed). And that’s what this is all about.

The key thing to remember is that all these factors are related, you can’t adjust one without affecting another. Learning the relationship between them isn’t something that can be mastered over night. I’ve been reading & trying it out for months now and I still have SO much to learn. However getting to grips with all the settings on your camera (whatever the model) will be the one thing that transforms your photos from average to fab. The moment I took my camera off auto was the moment I started to get pictures I was really happy with and excited by. So whatever you do, shoot in manual (or aperture priority) and teach yourself the basics (it’s no good having a DSLR if you don’t know how to use it). You won’t look back.

As a quick starter for 10, when it comes to my outfit posts if i’m shooting outside and it’s sunny, I tend to shoot on F1.4 or F1.6 at around 200 ISO and 1/2,500 shutter speed. If it’s a really cloudy day this may change to 400 -600 ISO and 1/1000 shutter speed (Ideally you want your ISO low and shutter speed high for sharp images). But it’s really a case of testing what works. I’ll always do some test shots to get the lighting right before I take a full set of outfit photos. There’s nothing worse than getting your whole look shot then realising everything is over or underexposed (and trust me, this has happened A LOT).

If you don’t fancy shooting on manual and manually adjusting all these settings just yet, then I hear a lot of people recommend Aperture priority mode (AP) this is where you’re camera sets the right shutter speed for you, and you’ll set a fixed aperture and ISO. It’s one less thing to worry about.

Why not dedicate your next trip out at the weekend to playing around with the settings on your camera, shoot using various combinations to get to grips with how it works & if you have time read up on it & watch a few tutorials to help (it’s how I learnt and am still learning).

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I don’t have much to say on this other than natural light, natural light, natural light. As much as you can shoot in day light hours, it makes such a difference to your images & the brightness & clarity. Indoor lighting or flash just don’t look good, test it out and see for yourself.

But one thing to remember when shooting outside or in natural light is where you want the sun to be and also what hour of day would work best for your desired shot (e.g. if you want beautiful organ hues, you’ll be wanting to time your photos around golden hour as the sun sets). Personally I hate to be facing direct sunlight, I find it really tricky to shoot this way and find pictures can be over exposed & just not as great quality, but I love a shot when the sunlight is behind me, beaming through creating a really bright image. When working out what shots you want, work out where you need the sun to be to help create that image – behind you, facing you, not in shot at all etc.

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. SHOOT IN RAW & POST EDIT .