One of the biggest things I see businesses lacking is good photos, I’m here to teach you how to get better photos for your biz. And it’s something that everyone can do, they just need to know how. People think good photos must come from a professional photographer. Nope, thanks to technology and some technique, we all have access to good photos.

I’m a photographer, and I know how to get the best shots. I’ve adapted and learned over the years as technology has changed. And let me tell you, it’s changed in YOUR favor!

Here are my tips on getting quality photos that you can use to drive more traffic and increase the look and feel of your business.

Utilizing Natural Light

Perfect natural light is something every photographer swoons over. Way back when I did portrait and wedding photography I would go to crazy lengths to get the best natural light for my shoots. Almost all of my newborn shoots were done in front of a window with natural light, even though I had a pretty nice artificial lighting setup.

If you’re taking photos inside, find an area with good natural light. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing product photos or shooting a video of yourself. Find the room with the most windows, and do some testing on angles and backgrounds. Hint, this may change as the sun moves across the sky.

If you’re outside, the best lighting will be in the morning and evening hours when the sun isn’t harsh. You know when you take a picture when the sun is high up in the sky and your photos are blown out? Shooting in the middle of the day give you super bright highlights and very dark shadows. This is really difficult to edit around. If you can, try to utilize the morning and evening golden hours for beautifully lit photos.

If you must take the photos outside in the middle of the day and you can move your subject, shoot in the shadows. You’ll use a similar technique as shooting indoors with natural light coming in the window.

Improve Your Photo Composition

Using photo composition to your advantage will give you more interesting and better photos. There is a lot that goes into photo composition in professional photography, but these simple tips will give you confidence and better photos.

Start with turning on your grid in your phone or camera. These are horizontal and vertical lines used to help place your subject in your frame. Try to aline your subject with the lines. If it’s an outdoor photo with an obvious horizon, line the horizon up on the top or bottom line. If there is a vertical subject, line them up with the left or right line. This creates interest in your photos. Use the crosshairs of the lines to put focus on one object.

If you are taking photos of a building, shooting the photo towards the corner adds interest to the photo. When you are taking pictures with a road in it, use the lines on the road or edges of the road to add interest.

If you are taking pictures with a person in it, try to steer clear of placing them directly in front of a wall. Pull them away from a wall or background so the focus is on the subject, not everything else in view.

Perfecting photo composition to get better photos takes practice. But thinking of these tips when setting up your shots will give you a great start.

Editing Photos & Using Presets

If you don’t have an editing app on your phone will you please stop what you are doing right this second and download Lightroom? Lightroom is a FREE photo editing app found in your app store. Almost never do I post or share an image without editing it somewhat. Many times even if the lighting even is great, our phones capture it slightly different. Even the smallest edits can make the biggest difference in the quality of your photos.

Editing apps allow you to change the lighting, brighten the shadows, reduce the harshness of highlights, correct the overall color, and even bring out certain colors. The first thing I do when editing a photo is correct the lighting which includes overall exposure, shadows, highlights, whites and blacks. Then after the lighting is where I want it I assess color. If the color is too cool or too warm, I adjust the overall hue of the photo. Sometimes you’ll take a photo where one color completely takes over the photo. You can select that color and reduce the saturation or even adjust the hue of the color.

Now it’s time to talk presets, which will soon be your best friend. Professional photographers utilize presets all of the time to create consistency and save time. Now our photo editing apps on our phones allow us to do the same. This is very valuable to business owners, allowing us to create brand consistency in photos. I use presets for almost every photo you see on my social media accounts. I’ve created presets that match my brand’s look and feel so I can edit my photos in seconds. I don’t have to go through every single edit for all of my photos. You can even adjust the level of your overall preset for each photo you edit.

I’ve created 3 FREE editing presets to get you started. Make sure you have downloaded the Lightroom app for mobile and follow the instructions on installing the presets.

Make Taking Better Photos A Priority

The main point here is you don’t NEED fancy equipment to get good photos. But you do NEED to prioritize taking better photos and editing them to improve the overall look and feel of your brand or business. Get creative and pay attention to how you’re taking photos, how they turn out and work on getting better and better. Many times the difference in stopping the scroll or getting more likes is the hook of a quality photo. Now go rock your social feed with better photos!