my top 3 photography resources

 

Over the past couple years, I've answered a ton of questions about how I've improved my photography skills. Most people want to hear that I bought a better camera. In reality, there are a lot of things that I have done to improve my photography from upgrading my camera to taking a lot of pictures (somewhere in the range of 12,000 to 15,000 per year for three years straight) to studying a wealth of great photos. Today I'm outlining the top three things that have had a huge impact on my photo skills the past year.

 Digital Photography Recommendations / PhotoRec Toby

I've been watching Toby's YouTube channel for over two years now, and by far, it's my favorite YouTube photography channel. One of my biggest complains about photography tutorials is that they tend to cover very basic or extremely advanced techniques without much in the middle. Toby does a good job finding this much neglected middle ground. Beginners won't be lost but professionals can still learn a lot. Toby covers everything from product reviews to Lightroom tutorials to composition techniques. He's had a huge influence on most of my gear purchases and a lot of my photography routines, such as Instagram workflow and Lightroom uploading routine.

In addition to the YouTube channel, Toby has a very active, supportive Facebook community that I highly recommend joining. Additionally, he and his professional wedding photographer fiance are in the process of releasing an outstanding Lightroom video series. I am certainly not an expert on Lightroom, but I've been using it every week, if not every day, for nearly two years, and I've learned so much from this series.

 Pinch of Yum

Pinch of Yum is a food blog. I started following it after Natasha wrote a review of sorts a while back about Pinch of Yum's food photography ebook. Recently Pinch of Yum conducted a reader survey. One of the things that I mentioned in the survey is that I've learned as much about photography as I have about making delicious food from reading their blog, which is absolutely true. In the past few years, Lindsay has taken her photos to a whole new level, and I spend a lot of time studying them and reading her photography tips to improve my own work. As many of you already know, Lindsay played a large part in my decision to start using a larger artificial lighting set up. As such, I've referred back to Artificial Lighting Tips for Food Photography and 5 Ways to Improve Your Food Photography With Artificial Light multiple times in the past year.

Instagram

It took me a long time to get on board with trying Instagram because I'm inherently wary of anything trendy. I never expected to like it as much as I do. You'll be hard pressed to find a more efficient way to study literally dozens of amazing photos every day. It can take a while to find great photographers that you want to follow and get into a routine of going through your feed each day, but it's well worth the effort.

How do you improve your photography skills?

If you have any favorite resources, please feel free to share them in the comments!

Instagram pet peeves

During the past year, I've become a huge Instagram fan and look forward to browsing each day. However, there are a few things that I see there frequently that drive me up the wall.

Feet photos

 Seriously, why are there feet in this photo? This has become THE THING to do on Instagram. How did it suddenly become a requirement to include your feet in every possible photo?

Crooked horizon

 I realize that sometimes people shoot a crooked horizon on purpose, and there's nothing wrong with that. I do it, too. However, there are tons of shots with unintentional crooked horizons, and it's just lazy. You can make that correction right in the Instagram editor. Fixing this kind of issue can make the difference between a good photo and a great photo.

HDR for the sake of HDR

 HDR is an old photography technique that has recently gained new popularly, largely thanks to a lot of gimmicky filters and apps and consequently an explosion of HDR-esque images on every widely used photo site. Many people create and post HDR type images without any real rhyme or reason and without any idea how to create a real HDR image in a program like HDRsoft. You can read more about it including when you should and shouldn't use HDR on Life Hacker.

Weekly baby update photos

  Monthly photos are fine, but weekly is ridiculous. If you want to take those photos, that's absolutely fine. That doesn't mean that you have to post all of them.

Photo dumps

 This individual took and posted most of these photos within a 24 hour period. No one wants a narration of an entire excursion via photos on an app like an Instagram. Pick a few. If you want to share more, spread them out over a longer period of time.

Hashtag dumps, particularly when they have nothing to do with the photos

Hashtag dumps are irritating enough in and of themselves, but they're especially irritating when they don't have anything to do with the photo. The above photo has tags for "food" and "colorful."

Throwback Thursday photos that aren't actually old

I actually cheated and found this via Twitter, but you get the idea. You see this on Instagram all the time, too. A Throwback Thursday photo should be at least six months old, not you know, six hours old.

Is anyone with me on any of these pet peeves? Do you have pet peeves to add to the list? Feel free to share them in the comments!

How to Take and Post Great Instagram Photos

 
As many of you know, I recently joined Instagram. I resisted joining for a very long time because I didn't see the point in browsing bad photos of every tiny detail of people's lives that we don't really need to see. I still believe that a lot of the Instagram content is not so great and that you have to be careful about who you follow. However, there are a lot of really talented photographers who put together regular posts that are interesting and meaningful.

The following video is what finally convinced me to join.

I have been following this YouTube channel for at least a few months and think highly of pretty much all of his photography advice. If you've been on the fence about Instagram for the same reason as me, watch the video or at the very least, go check out his Instagram. I think you'll come away convinced that you can take and post great Instagram photos. So how do you do that? Here's my two cents on the topic.

(photo taken by my friend Steve)

Use a Good Camera

If you have an SLR and are serious about sharing high quality photography, use it for your Instagram photos. I know that this doesn't apply to a lot of people reading this post, and that's fine. Learn the settings for whatever camera you have, even if it's only your phone camera, so that you can maximize its potential. It's amazing what you can do with a high quality phone camera these days, such as an iPhone 5 or the newer Samsung Galaxy phones. Don't settle for shooting mediocre photos on the auto settings. You can do so much better than that!

Crop Your Photos to a 1:1 Ratio

It is really easy to crop photos to a 1x1 ratio in virtually any photo editing program. Cropping in a dedicated program ensures that you'll get a properly proportioned photo for Instagram every time. I choose to do this on my computer, but there are a lot of  photo editing apps, such as Snapseed, that work just fine, too.

Add Text, Borders, Etc. in Photo Editing Programs

There are a lot of other professional touches that you can make to your photos in photo editing programs before you ever head to Instagram. There are a ridiculous number of apps for any number of different photo editing techniques, such as Photo Grid, which allows you to make collages for your phone photos. It's not hard to add these details.

Limit the Number of Photos You Post

Resist the temptation to Instagram entire events. You can take as many pictures as you want, but don't post all of them. Pick and choose your favorite photos when you have to the time to edit before you post.

Use a Select Number of Relevant Hashtags

If you've spent any time on Twitter or Instagram, you know that I mean. Do not clutter your post with an excessive number of hashtags, especially when they aren't relevant. I feel silly explaining this, but I see a lot of photos on Instagram for specific places that have hashtags for additional places just to get views (i.e. a photo of the Chicago skyline with tags for New York and Los Angeles). A few relevant hashtags will bring in views from non-followers. A large number of irrelevant tags will send everyone running the other way.

Finally, the winners of my photo giveaway have been chosen. They are as follows:
1st Place - Edi
2nd Place - Paige
3rd Place - Natasha

Congrats, ladies! I will be in touch shortly about getting your prizes together.

Do you use Instagram? If so, do you have tips for creating and sharing great photos? Leave them in the comments!