Famous Instagrammers share tips for taking better photos and getting more followers
Being famous on Instagram can come with a lot of perks, but unless you're a celebrity, getting thousands of followers isn't easy.
There's no special trick to becoming an amazing and popular photographer on Instagram, but there are a few shooting and editing practices you can adopt to take your Instagram game to the next level.
To learn the best mobile photography tricks, Tech Insider spoke with four famous Instagrammers who combined have over three million followers.
Use interesting angles
Understand and study light
The use of natural light can make or break a photo, and it's important to understand how light works if you want to take advantage of its effects on a landscape or subject.
Instagrammer Cory Staudacher, who has 596,000 followers and lives in Seattle, has a video explainer on light and editing that's worth watching. Here are the two key points he makes on light:
- Harsh light is direct sunlight that blows out a photo's natural colors. Light will generally be harsher the closer the time is to the middle of the day, so the morning and evening are usually the best time to take photos with warm, flattering light.
- Clouds and overcast skies are great for softening light and getting rid of harsh shadows.
The hour before sunset is often called "golden" or "magic" hour because it's when the sunlight is the most warm, and it's an especially good time of day to shoot portraits. Many weather apps will tell you when golden hour starts and ends on a given day, but if you're serious enough, a $4 iPhone app called Lumy tracks the day's different light phases.
Capture, capture, capture
Staudacher is a big fan of taking as many photos as possible. "I like to capture a ton," he says in another video. That way he has more options, with a range of exposures and focus settings, to choose from.
The iPhone's burst mode is another great way to take a lot of pictures at once.
Use physical filters to make things more dramatic
While software filters can be great for creating interesting photo effects, physical filters over your phone's camera lens also make great images.
Rise sometimes puts his sunglasses over his iPhone camera to make a skyline look more dramatic or add cool light leaks. "It creates really awesome reflections with your phone," he says.
"A little goes a long way" with editing
Avoid making a photo look too edited. When Chris Ozer is editing a photo to share to his 652,000 Instagram followers, he starts on a filter's weakest setting and slowly makes it stronger.
You want a filter to enhance a photo, not distract viewers with its intensity. VSCO Cam, Litely, Afterlight and Darkroom are all great photo editing a for the iPhone.
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