With our own photography experience and information we’ve learned working with various photographers along the way, we created 5 Pro Chic Tips! They’re guaranteed to make you a better photographer. Happy clicking!
Get the lighting right
Lighting is a hot topic when it comes to photography. It changes throughout the day, from warm to bluish and everything in between. Photographers strive for natural lighting but it can be hard to obtain indoors. At Chic, we always have our students and any photographers who use our space, play with various sets of lighting in different rooms of the studio. Our makeup artist students love playing around with various lights in different classrooms at various times of the day. Thankfully, we have large windows that capture tons of light! If you’re at home and reading this, test various rooms with your shades adjusted differently and play with curtains if you have them. Capitalize on rooms with windows and position your camera in areas the sun shines.
When we’re shooting outdoors, we schedule for sunrise and sunset, which are the most popular times of day and definitely the most beautiful for photography. Photographers call it the “magic hours.”
If you’re picking up a camera for the first time, or working with someone and want to know more…. The most important thing is to test, play with light, and don’t be intimidated. With practice, the perfect lighting will come.
Test out your angles
You rarely get the perfect shot on the first try. Get creative and take photos from every possible distance and angle. Try a focused shot and a distance shot. Shoot your object from below, from the side or above. Your favorite photograph isn’t always the one you had envisioned before shooting, so venture out of your comfort zone and get creative!
Stay focused
Mastering the focus of your shot is essential for taking great photographs. Generally, cameras have three but sometimes four choices for focusing methods: Continuous, Single, Automatic and Manual (we know this from google and our favorite photographers out there! Toast to you all!)
Manual focus is the most standard option of the four. It relies solely on your ability to capture the subject without the help of your camera’s settings. Tripods are incredibly beneficial for manual focus.
Get comfortable with your camera’s focus settings, it will make a huge difference in your photography skills!
Beware of flash
At times, flash creates unpleasant effects such as red eyes or blurriness. In many cases, however, we need flash if it’s just too dark. Capitalize on your camera’s settings and lower the brightness as best you can if you want/need to use flash.
At Chic, we usually have our photographers use flash at night or when they shoot indoors at Chic Studios NYC, to add more light, and create a specific ambience.
Use editing software to enhance photographs
If you used the above four tips, We’re positive your photos will look gorgeous. But remember…there is a myriad of technology and software readily available online to enhance photography. By editing photos, you can enhance colours, sharpen objects and use your imagination to create something special and unique!
Popular photo editing software includes…
(We’re not the experts in photography but we’ve worked with the best in the business for years, and they recommend (as does google!)
- Adobe Photoshop (Chic Studios favorite)
- Coral PaintShop Pro
- DxO PhotoLab
- Skylum Luminar
- ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate
The world of photography is vast and includes various tips for success beyond these five. Bottom line beauty, we hope you feel confident to get started, or keep going! Click away, try again, happy snapping!
Here are a few books we recommend as well, for inspiration!