Social media managers wear many hats these days. Being in social media management means you become a copywriter, editor, an SEO expert and a photographer. If you’re in the world of marketing, chances are you are a creative person, but if you’re anything like me, photography does not come naturally. But, photography is an asset to add to any resume and is something you can benefit from developing. Images are very important, especially for digital marketing and while there are a lot of stock images available, it is always advised to take your own pictures that best showcase your clients brand
Here are some tips that have helped improve my photography skills and expand my skillset. This set of photography tips is for the non-photographer working in social media management.
The composition is about the balance of the elements in your photograph. Good composition is what differentiates a good shot from a random wide shot. To get a good composition, you need to plan what you want in your picture and where you want them to be. There are a few principles of composition.
Using the rule of thirds, you divide your photo by two imaginary horizontal and two imaginary vertical lines. You place your elements where these lines intersect.
When you shoot landscape or any other scene for that matter, your vertical lines should be straight and your horizontal lines level. Expect the tilt is for an effect.
Before you put out the photograph that you have taken, you may need to edit it before you put it out there. The purpose of editing is to improve your image and make it look even more authentic. Adjusting the colours of the image is one great way to improve it.
One of the first things to do is to increase or decrease the brightness or contrast of the image. An underexposed shot can become a lot better with this simple adjustment.
You can also adjust the hue, saturation, levels and curves of the image too. With hue, you can change the colour of the image and with saturation, you can change how colourful the image is. Levels allow you to increase the amount of the three primary colours in the image. Curves allow you to increase the level of shadows or highlights in the image.
It is important to stick to a theme, so your images can have a look that is specific to you and your brand. This will give your photography a professional look perfect for social media management.
The resolution is the level of detail achievable by a monitor or a printer, determined by the pixel per inch, dots per inch or lines per inch. When taking your photographs, the higher the resolution of your image, the better the quality and the bigger the size.
If your photos are going to be printed, you should shoot your images at the highest quality possible. This will mean you will shoot at the lowest or no compression at all. Shooting at a high resolution leaves you the option of cropping your image or enlarging a portion of it and still getting enough details for printing.
Hashtags are important for social media and knowing the right ones to use could be the difference when you want your photos to be seen. Hashtags can be used for several reasons.
You could use a hashtag to get in on a trend. You could use a hashtag to get your pictures featured in a series. The number of people using a hashtag does not mean it is right for you, there are others factors to consider. A niche hashtag could be better for you because the people who will check out these hashtags are already interested in photos similar to what you are posting.
Lights are very important to the quality and beauty of the picture you take. When lighting a subject, it is better to use a broader light because the narrower the light the harder it is. A broad light reduces shadows and contrast and it suppresses texture. To get a broader lighting, move the light source closer to the subject. The farther the light source, the harder it is. This is why the sun is a hard light source.
If you have hard light, a diffuser can be used to scatter the light and scatter it. You can also use a reflector to reduce the hardness of light. The reflector also acts as a diffuser.
There are several apps that can help you learn faster so you can add photography to your social media management skill set . With your iPhone or Android phone, you have access to the iOS and Google Play Store respectively. And below are apps available on these platforms.
For iOS.
Photography 101
Photo Academy
Elements of Photography
For Android
DLSR Photography training apps.
Photography Free
Photocaddy – Photography guide.
The camera you get is not the biggest of your concerns for a new photographer. It will be a big lie to say the camera you have does not matter at all because it does when you’re taking professional photos for social media management. But a thousand dollar camera will be useless if you don’t know how to use it. That being said, the quality of camera you will use will depend on what you are taking the photos for.
Phone photography is on the rise now with more phone coming with great cameras. However, for the best quality of pictures, you may have to buy the absolute top-end phones.
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