Happy Saturday! I hope you're having a fab weekend. I must admit, I've not really been up to that much today. I did pop on Netflix though and watch some more episodes of Friends! I decided to start watching it from the beginning. This time in the correct order. I don't think I've ever really watched Friends episodes in the right order. It's also been a while since I've watched most of the episodes so it's nice being able to watch them again. I was so sad when channel 4 stopped showing them.
For today's blog post I thought I would share with you how I take and edit my blog photos. I know that there are already lots of tips and tricks all around the blogosphere, but I thought that I would share with you how I personally take and edit mine. I love reading these types of posts myself as it really inspires me with my photography and I'm always looking to find new tips and tricks for taking photos. If you're interested in seeing what my photos looked like when I first started blogging, check out this blog post from 2012, and this one too! I love looking through my old blog posts and seeing how much my photos have changed since then.
The majority of my photos on my blog have been taken with my iPhone 6 and my more recent ones are taken with my Canon 700D. You can take amazing photos with your phone camera. I absolutely love the camera on my iPhone 6. These photos were took using it and these ones too. For taking photos with my phone camera, I love having the grid mode on as it really helps, especially when taking product photos. With my Canon 700D, I also make sure that I have grid mode set on it too.
I love taking photos and photos of nature, that's why I got my Canon camera, I did start to use it for blog photos when I got it a few years ago but then I decided to use my phone camera as I just loved how the photos turned out using it. But I have recently gone back to using my Canon, as I really wanted to learn more about the camera and try out different things with my photography. But what I'm really trying to say is that it really doesn't matter what camera you have, whether it is the one on your phone or you have a DSLR, you can take amazing photos with whichever one you have.
Scroll down to find out about what props I use and how I edit my photos. 😀
When it comes to props for photos, you may see that in a lot of my recent photos I use pink, purple and orange flowers. These have kind of created a theme on my photos and one I use for Instagram too. I love bright colours, as they make me feel happy. I love collecting things to use as props. I'm actually going to do a whole blog post on using props very soon. I usually use things that I have lying about in my room. But if you happen to be going to Primark, I highly recommend checking out their homeware section, as they have so many great items that you can use for props. They are very affordable too.
Items that I do love using as props, is makeup. Especially lipsticks, which you may have already noticed in my Instagram photos and also photos on my blog. In the photos in this post, I used some makeup I have got by Essence as props and also used my purple, orange and pink flowers in the background. I also added in my cute little Marie trinket dish too.
When it comes to using backgrounds for my photos, I use just some plain foam whiteboards that I got. You can get these from craft shops and online, and I got some self-adhesive film in a marble and wood style and I placed these on the whiteboards. You can get the self-adhesive film from shops such as Wilko and B&Q for about £5 or £6. I find this to be a very affordable way of creating amazing backgrounds. I also like to use wallpaper samples too. You can get some really bright, colourful ones. I used some wallpaper just placed on the floor for these blog photos, and these ones too. I especially like to use it for when taking photos for book reviews.
When it comes to editing my photos, I actually use free apps on my phone. I would love to try out and use Lightroom, but as you may already know, it's not free. So this is why I use apps. I will admit that it does take a little more time to do it this way, but you can get really amazing free apps that are brilliant for editing photos. First I take the photos on my camera, then upload them to Flickr. I have the Flickr app on my phone, so I then go to the app and save the photos to my phone.
I firstly use an app called Facetune 2. There are certain features that you do have to pay for on this app, but all I literally use this app for is for the whiten feature. Sometimes depending on what light I have come through to my room, my photos can come out a little darker, meaning my white background turns a grey colour. I use the whiten feature to help with this. It instantly brightens up my photos and makes the background, not so grey. I actually saw someone tweet about this app and recommend it, to use for blog photos. I've been using it ever since. It still lets the photos look lovely and natural and doesn't interfere with the quality of the photos.
The next app I use is ColorStory. I've been using this app for a while now. Before using it I used VSCO, which is another free photo editing app that I highly recommend checking out. With ColorStory, like Facetune, there are certain features that you have to pay, but I use a free filter on it called pop and then brighten my photo a little with one of the tool options, and then use the tilt option if my photo has come out not quite level. I love that the filters and brightness on this app, makes the photos look very natural still, even though I have edited them.
There are so many more great apps out there that can really help with editing your photos. As I mentioned above, it does take a little more time, as I am having to transfer photos over, but if you are on a budget like myself and don't want to spend money on editing software, then these apps are amazing for editing. I actually find the whole process quite fun, I love playing around with the different features of the app and finding what works and what doesn't.
I also invested in a softbox light a while ago, as I just wasn't getting very good light coming into my room. Even though the softbox light helps a lot, I do still like to use the editing apps mentioned above. I had been thinking about getting one for quite some time, but I just didn't know whether it would be worth it or not, but after speaking to other bloggers, I decided to go ahead and get one, and I am so happy I got it. The ones I looked at, you can either get them as a pack of 2 softbox lights, or you can buy just one single one. I decided to get just one single one as I felt that this would be enough. After looking on Amazon, I found a really great one on eBay for a really great price. It was easy to set up and put together. I've actually left mine up as I do use it quite a lot, also it's very light and easy to move around my room. I'm so happy I decided to get one.
And that's it, that's how I take and edit my blog photos. Please leave any tips and tricks you have on taking photos in the comments below. Also please feel free to ask me any questions you may have about how I take and edit my photos.
