It’s that time of year again. The leaves turn into a beautiful array of colours, pumpkins are everywhere from drinks to doorsteps and suddenly it’s acceptable to pay 30 bucks to pick your own apples. With all these terrific scenes, it’s important to show off your glamorous life and get those aesthetic pics for Instagram or Snapchat. Here are my top tips for showing off your photography skills this fall!
Find the best lighting
In my opinion, lighting is what makes or breaks a photo. If you’re taking a photo of scenery, like apple trees or a pumpkin patch, make sure that the area is bright but not overpowering. You should take the photo with the sun in front or above the subject, not directly behind. To get the nicest golden glow, take photos around golden hour, which is the time shortly after sunrise or right before sunset.
If you’re taking photos inside, make sure you’re using soft lighting that isn’t too harsh or blinding, and use mood lighting to your advantage. I think the most innovative tip I’ve heard is to look up a colour on Google, full screen it, turn off the lights and use the colour coming from your laptop as your mood lighting.
You can also use props to your advantage. I’ve seen beautiful pictures featuring a jack-o-lantern as the main source of lighting which is super cute. Just make sure that the prop has the brightest light source and that the background contrasts it.
Edit to perfection
Editing photos is something I’ve recently started doing which has really taken my photos to the next level. I’m not just talking about adding an Instagram filter to a picture, I’m talking upping the contrast, adding highlights, all that good stuff. If you’re just as much of a beginner as I am, the best (and least complicated) apps to use are either VSCO or Adobe Lightroom.
I like to lower the exposure and increase the contrast on pictures with a golden glow to intensify the effects. If you want to add a faux golden hour glow, you can increase the temperature to 6.0 and lower the exposure to -3.5. On pictures with harsher lighting, you can lower the highlights, or add shadows on photos that are too bright. To give your photos an old-school/Polaroid look, turn the temperature down to -1, increase grain to 2.6 and lower the saturation by -0.7. This can also be used on darker photos that you want to give Halloween horror-movie vibes to.
And there you have it! Photos really are the best way to show your fall spirit and the least obvious way to gloat your super cute fall plans. Use these skills to give spooky fall vibes to your Instagram feed.