Instagram Tips for Personal and Business

Hello again! Welcome to Monday Mash Up. This Monday is all about Instagram since I have had so many questions lately.

I Love love love Instagram. I was really late in starting my instagram accounts and I almost didn’t. However, once I did I just found so many benefits as a busy mom and for my business. Instangram is defiantly my social media platform of choice.  If you are interested in tips, my life and work you should follow me HERE.

Instagram caters to my business much more then any other social media platform and the instagram community is such an amazing place to connect with mothers, vendors, photographers, other creatives and clients.

I use instagram for almost everything. Besides my business account I also started a personal instagram account that is only images that I take with my phone of my children.  My motivation for starting this was Chatbooks!  Its a application for your phone that another photographer told me about when my daughter was about a month old. Chatbooks links up to your instagram account and every 60 posts it prints you a 5×5 hardcover book.  Check out my instagram story today to see me walk through a few of mine. I love it!  It is basically a digital baby book.  You can also edit the text and dates and move images around if you would like. I just leave it how it is and that way everything is documented the day it happened.

Last week I mentioned that I would walk you through how I edit on Instagram. So here we go…

Editing in Instagram for personal or business use:

There is an app called VSCO is awesome if you have a hint of “film-like” characteristics but it doesn’t work for me or match my editing style.  It is easy, I’ve tried it and everyone seems to use it! However, I prefer to edit inside of Instagram! I have tried so many other apps like the ones mentioned in my last post, but I always come back to editing in Instagram if I am looking for a quick simple edit.

I edit inside of instagram for a few reasons:

• It’s easy! Super Easy!  And it is FAST!
• It settings and filters in Instagram are closer to my style.
• Its less time consuming and one less app on my phone.

I have instagram envy with most creatives and I wish I had the time and knowledge to perfect my instgram accounts and Iphone images, but I put my time and energy into other aspects or work and life and with instagram it is one thing that I am ok keeping simple.  For now anyways. Plus my edits vary depending what season and the atmosphere I am photographing and I have yet to find one filter for all of my images that I love. Maybe one day.

So here is how I edit in Instagram:

• Choose the image I want
• Crop if desired
• Bump up the brightness to a tad overexposed
• Bring in the highlights a bit
• Adjust the shadows if needed
• Add Contrast if needed and adjust saturation if needed
• If my image is too yellow Ill pull some of the yellow tone down in warmth setting
• Sharpen a bit
• Post

That is it! It takes seconds.

Apps for Instagram for Business:

• PASS – I deliver all my clients their galleries through something called PASS. PASS also has an App.  I have the app on my phone and can access all of my client galleries anytime, anywhere and download a particular image to my phone and then upload to instagram.  If you are a client and you haven’t done so already you should download the app then you can access your family images anytime. For my business account I only upload client images shot from my professional camera. I do not edit these in Instagram. I simply just upload from PASS.
• Squaready- Some images I do not want cropped into a square, so whenever I want to a rectangular image I upload it first to Squaready. It then places the image into a white square and then I can upload to instagram.  Pictured below.
• Latergramme- I use this every once in awhile. It is an application where you can schedule posts to post. It is great for things like going on vacation. However, I usually have my phone available and like explained above with PASS it is really easy to access your image. However, If you want to completely unplug from the world, but still have your images posting this is perfect.  I actually should be using it more because I am not that great with posting regularly.

Lastly, if you are shooting something for Instagram like some spring flowers to post for spring or your lap top, coffee cup and calendar to discuss scheduling, client prints or whatever it may be here are some tips.

• Natural light.  Always, always shoot these things in natural light.
• A clean space. I prefer white, but you can use whatever fits you best. Remember Instagram is basically you and your portfolio in tiny squares.
• Mathcing color scheme
• A white foam board – You can use this as a backdrop or as a reflector to reflect more light on what you are shooting.  I keep one of these in my kitchen so its always near by. With the holidays I haven’t shot anything in awhile on this. Here is the most recent image I have taken using it. Its my daughters birthday cake against the white foam board next to our sliding glass kitchen door.  Ta da!  I like to keep things simple.

This image below I shot of my daughters birthday cake against a white foam board and our kitchen door.

I think that is about it for one day!  Please feel free to message me with any questions and follow me on instagram for a peak into my Chatbooks and tips.

Have a wonderful weekend. I am going to spend some time this weekend loving my little ones and hopefully capturing some everyday moments of them at home, which I discussed two weeks ago here.

I also posted about taking images with your iPhone, If you missed it give it a read here.