How To Create Good Quality Photo Content

How To Create  Good Quality Photo Content

One thing that has helped me grow my social media page is creating good quality photo content and curating my feed in such a way that is appealing to my audience. I think it’s nice to make your feed look appealing because a well-organized feed will easily sway profile visitors to followers.

There is a whole process for achieving good quality photo content and it starts the moment you decide to create photo content. Creating good quality photo content requires planning followed by the creation process down to editing. 

Planning Process

There are few things I always put into consideration before I start creating photo contents and these guide the direction of my content.

 Here you have to decide the type of photo content you want to create. There are various types of photo contents available, from beauty, fashion, lifestyle, travel, food, etc. Your choice here will influence the kind of pictures you will take.

For beauty, I make sure my makeup is good because my makeup should be the focus of the photo. You also want to make sure that your hair or jewelry Isn’t too distracting.

For fashion, the focus should be on your outfit so your make up shouldn’t be too loud and your background shouldn’t be too distracting. When it comes to lifestyle, you have to decide the mood you are trying to convey which will direct the photo style.

After you have decided the type of photo you are trying to create next you consider your lightning; pick a spot with the best lighting. For me, when I shoot in my house, I stand in front of my window because that is where the best light comes from. Taking your pictures with good lightning makes your images come out better.

Next, you consider the other elements in your photo like your background, make sure your background is well organized and not too distracting. For me, I use my wall as my background when I shoot at my house because a busy background would most likely take the attention of your audience away from the focus of the picture. 

 My Editing Process

It took me a while playing around with different editing tools until I found what works for me.

When editing my pictures, I try to be very careful with the tool and process, to prevent my pictures from looking overly edited in the end. I also pay attention to the editing tools I use to make sure I get the best experience. I use two tools to edit my pictures and they are Facetune and Lightroom

 Facetune 

The first thing I do is take a look at the picture to have an understanding of the things I want to highlight then I use the details tool to highlight things like my lashes, eyebrows, my hair, jewelry, or anything I want to stand out in my photo. Then I go in and whiten my eyes, my teeth, my background if it is white.

Next, I use the blur tool to edit my skin by tapping l to remove any blemish then I save and export.

Lightroom

One thing I love about Lightroom is how flexible the tool is even with the free version, you have access to various tools to edit and get great pictures in the end. When I import the picture I just edited in facetune to Lightroom, the first thing I like to do is touch up the lightning of my picture, so I either expose the photo a bit or contrast it. With contrast I amp it up to 18 to make the colors vibrant, then I increase the highlight a bit, and deepen the blacks because I like my photos having a bit of depth. Most times I don’t touch the exposure especially when the lightning is right but if your picture doesn’t have enough lighting, you can increase the exposure a bit

Then I touch up the colors in my photos, so I decide if I want my photos to appear a bit warmer or cooler. I always like a bit of warmth in my photos so I take the warmth up a bit to 4 because it makes my skin look better in photos . for tint, I put a bit of pink, for vibrance, I leave it at 4 then saturation I take it to 7. 

Next, I open up the color pallet and make adjustments to the colors in my pictures. I love the color control in Lightroom because lt reads every color in your picture and lets you control them. I can make the color of my outfit more vibrant or dim with this tool. Then I move to clarity and take it up to 9, grain up to 10 then go to detail and increase the sharpening and reduce the color noise. I always like to enable the lens correction in my photos before I save and export.

Another thing I love about Lightroom is that it lets you save your edits as presets and apply them to other unedited photos like filters saving you the time and stress of editing pictures from scratch. Lightroom also lets you import presets to the app to edit other pictures. I use my Eko presets pack to edit all of my pictures because this preset pack is brown skin-friendly and goes well with the weather in Lagos Nigeria.

Maintaining a cohesive and aesthetic feed 

One thing I will like to point out here is that arranging your feed depends on your aesthetic, niche, and the kind of audience you are trying to reach. As a lifestyle creator, I combine pictures of me and inanimate objects to balance my feed. I also like to make sure that I use matching colors on my feed for uniformity. Another thing I pay attention to is the arrangement of my grid. For this, I use apps like UMUM and Planoly to plan the layout of my feed which helps me maintain a cohesive feed. 

Finally, I would like to advise that you try different processes and tools to find what works for you.  

I love hearing from you guys, so if you will be applying my steps feel free to tag me in your photos, and if you have tips that help you create great photo content feel free to share in the comment section.

Love & Light,

Valerie 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.