I’ve always been guilty of totally overloading my phone with pictures of my two dogs, a hilarious thing I saw that day or screenshots of funny memes, but now, I’ve been trying to up my Instagram game and have changed my approach. While funny memes make MY day, it may not make yours when scrolling through your Insta feed and that’s why I’ve started carefully curating the photos I’m taking with my iPhone with these simple tips:

1. Composition

Take photos with straight horizon lines, leading lines or the rule of thirds. When taking a styled photograph from above, make sure to group things with fun props to add interest.

2. Light

Always try and shoot with as much natural light as possible even if it’s just by a window, it will look better 100% of the time over using fluorescent or indoor lighting.

3. Editing

I use a few different apps to edit my photos depending on what they are. I’ve been really liking Afterlight recently since it gives you a ton of flexibility and has really good brightening sliders that don’t make my photos look too washed out. I’ve also heard a lot of people like VSCOcam and swear by that as well. It’s all a matter of personal preference and which interface works best for you 🙂

4. Hi-Res Photos from Your DSLR

A lot of people ask me if there’s some secret way I get higher res photos on my Instagram. You want to know the secret….It’s just email haha. I send the high-resolution image to myself and then save it to my phone. Easy peasy 🙂 Of course, any platform has to do some compression to your image in order for it to load quickly and not totally murder their servers, but it’s a lot better than screenshotting your images and then uploading.

5. Planning

Everyone is naturally drawn to things that are cohesive and feel put together. This concept is no different for you Instagram feed. Since I’m a very visual person, I have to see stuff laid out to plan it and Latergram has been a lifesaver for my Insta. From scheduling and planning to previewing how your chosen images will look arranged in your profile feed, this gem of an app is close to my heart. You get a limited amount of posts for free before needing to upgrade, but I’ve never found the need to go over ( I think you get 30 uploads a month).

So get out there, start snapping photos and rock your Instagram!

xoxo Anastasia