By Sarabeth Jones and Whitney Lobber

   First of all, think about:

• why are you taking pictures?
• why are you sharing what you share?
• why do you like to look at pictures?

 Now. Pull up your instagram profile. Look at the grid of pictures under your name. What do you see? What story are you telling?   Here is a random list of some of our favorites – they are telling a clear story with beautiful images, and they run the gamut from professional photographers to regular people who have simply learned some tricks to help out their photos. Take a look at:

• @abeautifulmessofficial
• @alisonchino
• @destinationeu
• @kjp
• @smileandwave
• @garethpon
• @taza
• @bobdavidson
• @ryanbyrd
• @christenbyrd
• @mooshinindy

 Now that you’ve seen these, we hope you’re inspired to take better pictures. Here are some things you can do!   While you’re shooting:   What are you shooting with?  

• iPhone camera (Whitney) I shoot 99% of my phone photos with my iPhone camera. No fuss, No frills.

1. Touch the screen to control the focus and exposure (brightness).
2. Lock the focus (helpful when your subject is close or hard to focus on) by holding down on the spot you want to focus until the yellow box pops up.
3. Help yourself with the rule of thirds (more on this later) by turning on your grid, I think the default is off, but you can turn it on under settings.  

• VSCOcam (Sarabeth) I also shoot mostly with my iPhone camera but I also like the camera in this app for a few reasons:

1. Tap the screen with 2 fingers to separate your focus from exposure which gives you a little added control over brightness.
2. Shoot in a square mode to help you see what you’re getting for Instagram – the full rectangular frame is still captured in case you want more to work with later.
3. The whole bottom of the screen turns into the camera button – it’s just bigger and easier.

 Don’t shoot in an app that’s not made to be a camera – like Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. You just have more tools to work with and will get better pics using a camera app.

  Things to keep in mind while you’re shooting:  

• Why: take a minute to think about the purpose of the content. You wouldn’t share on the fly on your blog; remember that this is part of a bigger story. Pictures of your kids, pets, dinner, place you visit…all fine, but does it fit the story you are telling

• Where: look at your surroundings, how does your location play into the photograph,
• Light: Where is it coming from, and what kind? filtered sunlight, direct sun, interior light, backlighting, side light. Turn off your flash. Don’t be afraid to play with light, moving around to see how it plays in your photo.
• What (check background, etc): be aware of the entire frame, even the background tells a story. With food you want the water on the fresh produce to give the photo a feeling, same can be true of the surrounding/background. For example…if I’m (Whitney) taking a picture of my son on my couch I might get up and open my blinds to add better light or shadows and move laundry off my couch to give a clean look. It’s still true to a natural moment, but just a cleaner version. I am a photographer and I will set people up for a natural photo; it’s very rare for it to happen completely naturally.
• Angles: start by taking lots of photos. Don’t be afraid to move around and see what works. Shoot from above, get lower (on the level of your subject), straight on, from the side. Then, in editing, decide what you like best. Resist your urge to post multiples and only post one! Save the progression and full story for your blog.
• Color: pay attention to it in each photo as well as your total feed/story. Use it, don’t let it overwhelm. A note about black and white – make it black and white, lots of contrast, not just a bunch of gray.
• Rule of thirds, leading lines: imagine you take your frame and cut it in 9 equal parts, like a tic tac toe board. This is the rule of thirds. Use the intersections of those lines as points of interest, something the eye will naturally be drawn to. By placing a subject in the middle of the frame your eye is immediately drawn to it and then has no place to go. By placing your subject on one of these points of interest, near a side, your eyes follow the photo and linger longer. Another tool to lead a viewer into a photo is the use of leading lines. Often a road, bridge, straight line, path, but can also be a softer line that leads you deeper into the photo.
• Try the opposite: Always important to remember that sometimes we have to throw out all of these rules. Some of our favorite photos are real life, messy and all, or a photo off the grid. We can really love a photo in full center focus. or something with so much negative space.
• Take a LOT of pictures: It’s worth repeating. Take several, look at what you got, adjust. Try the opposite! Lather, rinse, repeat. J

  While you’re editing (you ARE editing, right?):  

• Cropping can make your picture stronger – make it look better, give it a stronger point of view. You can adjust to use leading lines or the rule of thirds, or can fix things you didn’t get quite right when you shot.

• Contrast & saturation: if I (Sarabeth) don’t do anything else, I always adjust – increase – these. Especially for these pictures that are viewed on small screens.
• Don’t over adjust – remember to keep a natural look, especially if you are going to share these at a larger size, like on your blog.
• Color: Would your picture be stronger if it were black & white?
• You can do all of this in Instagram, or you can try our favorite apps –

1. Snapseed – we love the sliders for adjustments, mostly use crop, tune image & sharpening screens. You can vignette with the center focus screen.
2. VSCOcam – also has same tools – I like the separate shadows/highlight tools here – but VSCO sliders have stops, so they’re not quite as flexible as snapseed. Easier to vignette because there’s a specific tool for it. Some really nice filters too.  

This is a lot of information, and it’s a little hard to convey without visuals, but there are so many great tutorials on pretty much every aspect of photography – so if there’s a term you don’t understand, start Googling (or ask us)! Here’s to taking better pictures: Slideshare.

Whitney Loibner and Sarabeth Jones are framily. They love to take trips together, especially cruises. They love to have drinks on the patio together, especially margaritas. And they love living in Dogtown and taking pictures of it all. Whitney is quite adept at putting funny things in Sarabeth’s purse for her to find later, and Sarabeth is practically a professional at borrowing Whitney’s clothes.  [whitneyloibner.com | sarabethjones.com, @whitneyloibner & @sarabethjones on twitter & instagram]