Hashtag Authentic Read online

  5. Repeat this, but set your object off to one side of the frame. Align it with one of the alternative lines on the grid as in the rule of thirds. Check your angles and exposure, and snap.

  6. Repeat this process in another location in your home. Play around with changing the angle and position of your object, as well as the direction the light falls into your frame.

  Check your images are all clear, and then put down your camera and take a break. I often find it best to edit with fresh eyes, so read through the following pages on editing and come back to these images a little later.

  EDITING ON YOUR PHONE

  The process of editing on a phone has recently evolved to the point where it almost parallels desktop editing. The Lightroom app is wonderful for basic corrections and colour grading, and Photoshop Mix is great for adding layers and special effects such as clouds, birds or anything your imagination can conjure. Phone editing gives you a better indication of how the colours will appear on your feed, while transferring desktop edits can lead to a change in colour when viewed on a phone screen.

  @monalogue, UK

  Editing for Instagram on my iPhone is quick, easy and fun, and I get to preview the images exactly as they’ll be seen – on a small screen in the palm of the hand. Phone editing apps tend to be geared towards the Instagram style of editing, too, offering moody, vintage presets and quick-fix tools for the casual photographer who doesn’t want the trouble of learning Photoshop or Lightroom.

  Best of all, editing on my phone means I can shoot, edit and share in real time from pretty much anywhere in the world. Once you’ve experienced the freedom of working on the go like this, it becomes increasingly hard to justify dragging your bulky laptop with you on trips, holidays and photo shoots!

  There are a range of simple ways to get your images from an external camera to your phone if you’re shooting that way. If your camera is wifi or Bluetooth enabled, it’s simple to just pass them across. Failing that, take a look at the tips shown here for other ways to easily move images across.

  The Instagram app comes with its own simple editing tools, but there’s a whole spectrum of fun to explore in your app store, too.

  There is an overview of the editing apps I find myself using and recommending most often shown here. It’s fine to just choose one or two that work for you and stick with those – there tends to be a lot of overlap between functions in any case, so it’s mainly about finding the one that feels most comfortable and intuitive, and the best fit to the way you like to work.

  I’m aware that no sooner will I put these down in writing than the market and technology will change, so by all means do your own research, too. These are my favourites that have been a part of my repertoire for the last four or more years, and that I have faith will continue to move with the times and stay useful in future.

  BEFORE

  AFTER

  BRIGHT & CLEAR

  Before beginning any editing on your phone, first make sure that your screen is clean, your brightness setting is turned up and you don’t have any night-mode or accessibility filters changing the colour of your display.

  START WITH THE FIXES

  If there’s anything ‘wrong’ with the image that you’d like to fix, work on this first. I usually go in and straighten any perspective issues and crop, before moving on to any other tweaks.

  PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR WHITE BALANCE

  Getting the ‘temperature’ of your light as natural as possible before you apply any presets or filters is key to a consistent result and a harmonized style to your editing. Artificial light and sunlight on a bright day tend to be at the more yellow or ‘warm’ end of the scale. Natural daylight filtered through clouds is more blue or ‘cool’ – hence those blue-coloured daylight simulation lightbulbs you can buy.

  DON’T OVERDO IT

  Too much of any tool or setting can nudge an edit over into jarring, and detract from instead of enhancing your finished image. Look for options in your favourite app to dial down the strength of presets, and use a light hand when editing.

  DON’T UNDERDO IT EITHER

  Sometimes people think it is ‘cheating’ or somehow less honest if they do anything but post their images directly from the camera, unchanged. The truth is, post-production is as much a part of the process of modern photography as taking the photo to begin with! Most image presets came about from ‘film-emulation’ technology, with digital photographers trying to recreate the variety in tones and finish that different types of film could deliver. With digital photography, we simply make this decision after shooting, instead of before. In apps like Instagram we tend to tune into processed imagery, and anyone sharing an unedited photograph can find they look a little underwhelming and ‘unfinished’ in this context.

  FIND YOUR FAVOURITE PRESETS

  While I don’t think you have to be loyal to just one preset, or even one app, it pays to know your old favourites and roughly what sort of result you can expect when using them.

  ADD YOUR FILTER LAST

  For predictable and reliable results, it works best to work on all your edits and tweaks to the basic image, then add your preset or filter as a final step. Sometimes there’ll still be a final adjustment or two afterwards, but it’s much easier to see what a preset changes when you’re working with a clear baseline image underneath. This is also true if you’re going to do any object removal or digital manipulation techniques. Adding your preset last will help harmonize the effect and keep things looking as natural as possible.

  VSCO

  Free, with additional presets available at a small cost. Available on iPhone & Android.

  My first choice for smartphone editing, VSCO offers a range of purchasable preset packs comprising different moods, styles and aesthetics. Look out for occasional limited edition presets, and special offer periods where you can get the whole range at a discounted rate. The editing tools are all free and are solid and reliable, but some users complain it’s a little bit counter-intuitive and tricky to navigate at first.

  GREAT FOR: Any general post-production fixes. Adding a sense of mood and ambience to your imagery. Generally preferred by people who favour darker, shadow-filled or more muted imagery.

  A Color Story

  Free, with additional options and presets at a cost. Available on iPhone & Android.

  This app was developed by the blogging duo at A Beautiful Mess specifically for editing images for Instagram. A Color Story (note the American spelling) is similar to VSCO, but is generally preferred by creators with a brighter, more colourful aesthetic. There are in-app purchases available for additional presets and tools and ways to tweak your imagery. Includes curves, bokeh (out-of-focus aesthetic) and other fun features.

  GREAT FOR: Any general post-production. A bright, colourful aesthetic. Creative edits.

  Photoshop Lightroom

  Available on iPhone & Android.

  From the team behind the gold-standard desktop software Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, this app aims to offer the most popular editing tools in one app. It is not the same as the desktop version of either program, but regular users love being able to share presets across both versions and easily transfer images using Creative Cloud.

  GREAT FOR: Applying presets you have stored on your desktop-editing software.

  Snapseed

  Free. Available on iPhone & Android.

  Snapseed breaks the mould in offering editing tools and options the other apps do not. It’s also completely free, and always worth having on your phone for any especially tricky fixes. The presets aren’t my favourite, but it’s easy enough to fix a photo in Snapseed then quickly apply a filter in VSCO or one of the other apps above.

  Great For: General post processing, tricky photo fixes and more complex edits. The brush tool for exposure, saturation and dodge/burn is especially brilliant.

  TouchRetouch

  Available on iPhone & Android.

  This cheap and nifty little app works to remove unwanted lines o
r objects from any image on your phone. A little like using the Photoshop clone and blemish tools, but more intuitive and less labour intensive, with surprisingly convincing, quick results.

  GREAT FOR: Removing pylons, telephone wires or background strangers from your shots.

  A STEADY FLOW OF INSPIRATION

  Inevitably with any creative adventure, there are times when inspiration seems to abandon us. To keep up the pace with your visual storytelling, and to never feel like there’s nothing to shoot, it can be fun to introduce a few projects or running themes within your work.

  THE POWER OF PROJECTS

  I began my Instagram journey with a commitment to take and share a photograph a day for a year – a 365 project, as they’re sometimes called. A photo project can take any form – you could create scenes from your favourite movies, recipes from your favourite books, snap romantic graffiti wherever you travel, or simply take a series of self-portraits over the course of a year. Having a project gives us a reason to keep creating, and often a bit of a push to pick up the camera and keep forging ahead.

  VARIATIONS ON A THEME

  If one particular scene has worked well for you and perhaps with your audience, it can be fun to think of ways to keep reinventing it into an ongoing series. Taking the same image but changing one key element keeps it fresh, and begins to build a collection of photographs that can sit together to say something more. Look back through your recent work and see if there’s anything you could rework in a new dimension.

  GRADUAL CHANGE

  Sometimes the familiar things in our lives can tell a story over time, like the changing view out of my window, or the way a newborn baby grows month by month to dwarf its first cuddly toy. Repeating the same image regularly can be a great way to document gradual change and the incremental passage of time.

  HUMOUR

  We can take our photography seriously without always having to be serious. Some of the best Instagram accounts can have us crying with laughter – from parody images, recreations of impossible celebrity photos, to yoga-practising Barbie dolls, images can be packed with humour and are undoubtedly as fun to consume as they are to create.

  Feeling tired and a little burned out one year, I took a cardboard Luke Skywalker cut-out on a series of romantic ‘dates’ for some Instagram snaps. The ridiculous joy of taking an orange-clad Jedi on the London Underground, to windy Northumberland beaches and out to lunch with friends was such a welcome antidote to all the time I’d spent overthinking my own photography, and I eventually wound up meeting the actor who played him to take the final shot in the series!

  WHP

  Every weekend, Instagram prompts users to get creative with a ‘#whp’ or ‘weekend hashtag project’, and features their favourite responses on their own huge account. The theme has usually been announced by Saturday morning, wherever you are in the world, and you can find it by checking the latest posts on their @instagram account. Previous themes have included things like ‘hidden’, ‘light’, ‘movement’ and ‘love’, and browsing the entries under that week’s hashtag is a great way to find new people to follow and to get inspired.

  Having the constraints of a topic and a timescale – all entries must be uploaded by Monday to be considered for that week’s selection – can be a great boost to creativity and really spur us into action to try something different and new.

  EXERCISE

  Recreate and reimagine

  Go back to the moodboard of inspiration images we put together shown here and choose a favourite scene. We’re going to have a go at recreating and reimagining this into something of our own. It can feel odd, using someone else’s work as a jumping-off point, but it’s a brilliant way to learn. Just like when learning to paint or play piano, we begin by imitating the great masters, so we can discover so much about our own technique and skill by walking in the shoes of someone whose work we admire.

  Take a good look at the image you’ll be recreating.

  • What do you love about it?

  • What elements do you want to keep?

  • What direction is the light coming from, and what kind of light is it?

  • How is the composition formed?

  • What elements of this will you use in your recreation?

  • What sort of editing has been done?

  Now consider what elements you’d like to change. It’s easy enough to create a carbon copy without changing anything, but the result is often unsatisfying – it doesn’t really reflect our vision, and often compares poorly to the inspiration image we were working from.

  Instead, look at the objects, subjects and locations, and think about how you can make them your own. Perhaps your inspiration image is taken against a sunset beach sky, but yours will be of a cityscape at sunset because of where you live. Maybe you love an image of someone’s coffee and current knitting project, but can switch in your morning tea and calligraphy practice to make it your own.

  Set up the scene and experiment with taking the picture. Expect it to be tricky – the light, the shadows, the angles, your own inner critic chattering a steady stream of abuse. Ignore that voice, keep checking back with your inspo image, and continue adjusting, reflecting and trying again.

  The aim is not to wind up with a perfect recreation, of course, but to figure all of this out. Where were they stood in order to get that perfect symmetry? How had they wedged their cup to get it to sit like that? These are the little lessons we learn along the way as visual storytellers, and trying on other people’s photography like this is a great shortcut to working it all out.

  If you end up loving what you created, go ahead and share it online. It’s good etiquette to share your inspiration image, too, tagging the creator to give credit where it is due.

  Hashtag your image uploads with #HashtagAuthenticCreation and tag me, too, so I can swing by and cheer you along, and so others working through this process can see how you got on!

  ARCHIVING YOUR LIFE

  IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE DISNEYLAND

  In the tapestry of childhood, what stands out is not the splashy, blow-out trips to Disneyland, but the common threads that run throughout and repeat; the family dinners, nature walks, reading together at bedtime, Saturday morning pancakes…

  Kim John Payne

  Whether or not you have kids in your life, there’s something we can all relate to in these words. The idea of life being a tapestry woven together by common threads, some repeated, some unique, one or two occasionally shot through with gold.

  That’s not to say, of course, that those flashy trips to Disneyland don’t have their place. But when we look back, for most of us it still comes down to the gentle details: the plastic mouse ears that we insisted on buying in the colourful gift shop. The wails at the ice cream cone that was dropped on the ground.

  Often, when talking about Instagram with clients or friends, they’ll tell me that they’ve run out of ideas. They’ve no more inspiration; they’re too busy to think up new shots all the time. Or perhaps they have to go away travelling, and the careful routine of photography that they’ve made for themself seems to all come unravelled on the road.

  Life, of course, will do this. New places, seasons, life events and trends; family commitments, work upheavals, special occasions, testing times. They’ll come along and try to blow us off path, and make it hard to see anything worth capturing.

  Our creative practice can be the most wonderful tool in stressful or difficult times, but if we’re going to enjoy it, we have to let go of the voice of perfection, of how we think it should be. We have to tune out what everyone else is doing, and dig into the magic of our own story to tell.

  In this chapter, I’ve shared some tips for digging out the wonder in the everyday world around you. We don’t need a perfect home, a perfect wardrobe, a perfect life. Whatever our life looks like, it’s our own Magic Kingdom, just waiting to be shared.

  A NOTE ON HASHTAGS

  All of the Instagram hashtags I’ve shared in thi
s chapter were full of inspiring and brilliant images at the time of writing. Hashtags can evolve or be taken over by spam accounts for a while, so please click with caution and forget any suggestions if they’re less appropriate by the time you come to look them up! Better yet, cross mine out and add your own to the list. Writing in books is totally acceptable. I share fresh hashtag suggestions every month in my free newsletter. Join the list at meandorla.co.uk to stay updated too!

  CRAFT & MAKING

  Sometimes, when there’s truly nothing worth photographing, we have to make our own beauty.

  Art and craft activities are the perfect route to this. Whether it’s potato-printing wrapping paper with the kids or weaving a delicate spring wreath by yourself to the sound of the kitchen radio, making and doing is a gentle, calming way to bring something new and conveniently ‘Instagram worthy’ into your day.

  Plus, of course, these activities bring us joy and precious headspace in their own right. Whether you’re a hobby crafter, an artist or a pro, documenting your process and results allows us to record our progress, share our techniques and bring a whole new facet of reflection and understanding to our work.