How to take Insta-perfect pics of your grooms
In the age of social media, image is everything, and a fuzzy, dull, cluttered picture on Instagram simply doesn’t draw the right attention to your beautiful grooms.
You’ve worked for hours to do a perfect groom, and we have asked a professional photographer for her top tips on how you can spend just a few minutes taking photos you and your customers will love.
- 1 – Photography is all about light, and natural light is beautiful. Clear a space somewhere near a window, preferably without really bright harsh light. A north facing window is always best if you happen to have one as these windows will give a gorgeous pool of diffuse light and no harsh bright bits that will not look great in the pics. If you only have a really sunny window, then you could hang a net or a voile up in front of the window just to diffuse it a little bit, like a really big soft box.
- 2 – Turn the table or chair where you plan to position the dog at a 45 degree angle to the window, especially black dogs can loose definition in pics, being more side on to the light source will create more light and shade in their fur and catch lights in their eyes so that they pop out of the picture more.
- 3 – If you don’t have a window that is practical for you to use, then invest in a studio type daylight light that you can switch on instead of the sun. These are available relatively cheaply on the internet for as little as £30
- 4 – Clear the background, or use a neutral backdrop, you could even peg one onto your grooming table frame if you have one. Backgrounds are cheap to buy from Amazon (search for photography backdrops), or choose a neutral sheet (black works well for lighter dogs), or a white wall. If you have enough space for a permanent little photo corner, then you can even blutak a couple of strips of gorgeous fancy wall paper up which can make a lovely distinctive look to your pics and be in keeping with your brand.
- 5 – Choose backgrounds that compliment the colour of the dog, for example yellow backgrounds look fab with red dogs. Avoid colour clashes, my background is newborn photography and blankets always had to match woolly hats otherwise it didn’t matter how gorgeous the baby, the pic just didn’t work!
- 6 – Remember Insta needs square pics so make sure that rather than taking a picture in portrait and filling it with the dog, take the picture landscape and leave plenty of space either side for cropping.
- 7 – Edit the images afterwards, even just a 2 minute edit on the phone helps make the pics pop out. The smart phones edit photo functions will allow you to edit light, usually if you click on light, you will have the option to increase exposure. Have a play with this, but a general rule of thumb to make a pic pop is to lighten shadows a little, increase contrast and increase vibrancy. Insta has it’s own filters too and apparently it shows pictures more highly that have used it’s own filters. Not sure if this works, but may be worth bearing in mind…
- 8 – Try and use a similar set up and style for all the dogs that you photograph and post, in order to make sure your style becomes instantly recognisable in your followers feeds.
- 9 – Try a watermarking app on your phone from the app store or google play. Many will allow you to upload your salon logo and so you can make sure every pic that you put up also has your business logo on it.
- 10 – Make sure you are asking for your clients Instagram accounts and storing them in Savvy along with the photos you take, then when you are home and relaxing you can schedule your posts for a time when you clients are likely to be online and you can tag them into the post for maximum likes, hearts, re-posting and sharing…