Half the fun of travelling is knowing that your desk-ridden homies back home are frothing with jealousy whenever you upload a new Instagram photo, but are you really maximising your envy inducing capabilities? It’s time to step up your game and get those photos of Mediterranean beaches giving your mates a full on rager instead of just a covetous semi. There are a few basic things you can be doing to up those likes, and it’s all as easy as stealing candy from a drunk.
Rule of Thirds
If there’s one point you’re going to take away from this article, it should be this, the basics principle of framing a photo. Basically, divide your photo into thirds, both horizontally and vertically. Most phones have an option to enable this as a grid on the camera to make life easier for you. Then whatever you’re taking a photo of, put the important shit on the third lines. For example, if you’re taking that classic beach photo of sand, surf, and sky then you’d want the bottom third being sand, the middle third being surf, and the top third being sky. Simple right? If you’re taking a portrait photo of someone, put their eyes along the top horizontal third and rather than frame the person in the middle of the frame, put them to one side so their eyes are either side of one of the horizontal third lines.
Think about it
Just for like, 20 seconds before you snap your shot, have a think about where you are positioned and if it’s actually the best place to be. Quite often this ties in with the rule of thirds and you might find that by moving a couple of meters to the side and crouching down, you can put that palm tree on one of the vertical thirds and get the ground to be the bottom third. When you see something and think “Oh man that looks cool, gotta get a photo!”, statistically it’s pretty unlikely that you’re in the best place you could be so just take a moment to think about it.
Lighting
Lighting is one of the key aspects of photography but you aren’t exactly going to lug around a full lighting set up in your backpack. The one really useful tip when it comes to lighting is golden hour. There’s two golden hours every day, the first hour of sunlight and the last. Basically when the sun’s relative position in the sky gets low enough, the blue light in the spectrum essentially bounces off the atmosphere leaving just a beautiful golden light (hence the name) that will make anything outside have this stunning warm glow to it. If there’s anywhere you visit on your travels that you know you want a really good photo of, try and time it so you’re there for the last hour of daylight (let’s be realistic, you ain’t gonna do the first).
Filters
Less is more. Nuff said.
Basically, just by using your head and a few basic rules, you’ll be Insta-famous in no time. You don’t need a fancy DSLR or any pro equipment, just a beer in one hand and your phone in the other as you embark on a Bilbo-worthy adventure, snapping enough photos to have your friends literally moist with jealousy. If you’re on the lookout for the location of your next photoshoot, check out what we have on offer at Stoke for some truly erection inducing locations.
The post Tips from a pro on making your photos look better! appeared first on Stoke Travel.
Source: https://stoketravel.com/feed/