Love it or hate it, having social media presence for your beauty business is an important part of growing and gaining clients. In particular, Instagram is your opportunity to showcase your eyelash extension business in picture-perfect quality.
Whether you’re posting photos of your clients or flat lays of your products, you’ll, of course, want the imagery to look as professional as possible.
The good news is, you don’t need an expensive camera to take beautiful imagery. All you need is a decent phone camera and maybe some free app editing tools to make tweaks to your pics.
The key to creating high-quality content is all in the technique, and we’re going to guide you through some of our top tips.
1. Find your perfect lighting
Lighting can be the difference between a terrible photo and a brilliant photo. As a basic starting point, when taking a photo, you’ll want to have the subject of the image facing the light source – for example, a window or a ring light.
Natural light will often create the most beautiful imagery, but if you don’t have that at your disposal, purchasing something that you can use to create artificial light will make your images look just as professional.
2. Use layering in your images
Whilst minimalism is good, sometimes you’ll want to make your imagery more dynamic by creating layers.
This can be as simple as having your main subject in the foreground, but with something interesting going on in the background, like some pretty set-dressing or a view of your chic-looking studio.
When it comes to flat lays, you can create depth by placing items on top of each other, so that they overlap.
3. Use continuous burst for action shots
When the subject of the image is moving, use the burst setting on your phone to make sure you get the shot you want.
If you’re not sure how to activate burst photo mode on your phone, a quick Google search will help you.
4. Utilise the rule of thirds and negative space
The rule of thirds technique is used by photographers to draw attention to the important elements of their pictures. The technique can help add diversity to your social imagery so that you’re not just taking photos with the subject at the centre, surrounded by empty space.
The rule of thirds technique involves mentally splitting up what you see in the viewfinder into nine equal sections, created by two horizontal lines and two vertical lines.
The idea is that the important parts of your image is placed either along the imaginary lines or at the point at which they cross.
This method will help you highlight the most important parts of your photos, but also make use of the negative space, which would take up the majority of the photo if the subject was centred.
5. Mix up your angles
Get creative with your angles. Lift your phone up high or crouch down low, hold your phone close to the subject to pick up finer details or take a birds-eye-view approach.
Playing around with angles will help you find the perfect image that you weren’t planning on finding. Plus, by mixing up the angles, you’ll have photos that’ll look different enough to share multiple shots from the same photoshoot.
6. Take lots of images before deciding on the ‘one’
Chances are, those perfect photos on your Instagram feed were one of the hundreds of images taken as part of a larger photoshoot.
Don’t worry if you can’t get the shot you want on your first try – it doesn’t mean you’re a bad photographer!
Keep snapping away, tweaking the lighting and mixing up the angles until you think you have a couple of options that you can work with.
If there is only one image that you think is Instagram worthy, that’s completely normal, and you can consider your mini photoshoot a success.
7. Create a colour theme
It’s easier than you think, to beautifully curate your images to make them look the-same-but-not. Pre-sets are filters which you can apply over images to create a synergy of style.
Whether you want to make reds pop or create a cool wintery vibe, using pre-sets on your photography will ensure all of your content looks like it’s from the same family.
Alternatively, if you have a colour theme in mind, try incorporating something with that colour in each of your images.
Remember, you don’t have to be a professional photographer to take amazing imagery. The majority of imagery you find on social media have been taken on a phone, and there’s some high-end looking content out there.
The best way to begin creating professional-looking content is to grab your phone and get started finding out what works for you. Good luck!
