How to Take Perfect Instagram Photos: Prep, Poses & Editing Tips

hi i'm chi chi and i love instagram and judging by the way that you just click

on this video you love instagram too i'm actually gonna teach you guys how i take

my instagram pictures from all the prep that i do so the poses how i get the perfect

angle and how i edit so let's get started [Music]

okay for part one you're going to need to prep in order to prep properly you're gonna need some

inspiration a location an outfit and nice weather for inspiration i just go straight to

instagram and pinterest and i just go on my boards and see what i've been pinning recently i actually recently just made a

pinterest my pictures at the guccinello so if you want to follow me on pinterest you

definitely can but i definitely use pinterest and instagram as inspiration

i use that inspiration for outfits inspiration for location inspiration for poses i try to take the

ideas of a lot of other people and kind of combine it and make it my own in order to find inspiration it's

really easy to put yourself in like an aesthetic but just know that you don't have to fit

into just one aesthetic you can be multiple i also did a video about aesthetics where i

tried out different aesthetics for a week and it was really fun so i'll link that down below as well

and also in this whole inspiration phase you're supposed to figure out what type of picture do you want to take

do you want to take an outfit shot do you want to take a selfie do you want to take a mirror selfie do

you want to go mid shot or do you want to take a background shot being prepared when it comes to taking

pictures is super duper important because it will help the process just go by a lot

smoother also in terms of preparation you're gonna need to get a location down

you can literally take pictures anywhere some of my favorite places to take pictures is probably parking garage

because there's always really good lighting in garages and usually no one's there

so you don't have to face that awkwardness of people looking at you taking pictures of

yourself also something that's like a fave of mine are city pictures i love me some city pictures next you want to

pick your outfit the reason why you pick your location before you pick your outfit is because

you want your location and your outfit to match it's really important to match

your outfit with your location because it makes the picture a lot more aesthetically pleasing like for

this picture you can see that my outfit is very like brown tones and in the background

there's like a brownish tan wall so that's very aesthetically pleasing to eye and obviously it worked

because that picture got a lot of likes a lot of engagement and i gained like 500 followers just

from that post so matching your location with your outfit is extremely extremely important and you're probably wondering

where do i find these places for me after i take a picture in one location i'll go

i'll get all my stuff then i'll walk around the entire city and try to find the location of my next

picture and once i find a good location i'll take a picture of it your iphone will

tell you exactly where that is and exactly what time you took the picture so that

you know what time you need to be there in order to get the light the same way so that's how i find my locations but

honestly like anywhere with good lighting and aesthetically pleasing it's where i'll

go and as for what to actually wear when you're taking pictures

it's honestly entirely up to you whatever you feel comfortable with is what you want to wear there's this

one time where i was filming the trying different aesthetics video and i was trying to take pictures in the drip

aesthetic but i was extremely awkward the entire time because i knew that that aesthetic

just wasn't me so i couldn't take any good pictures and

it was really really hard but later in this video where i literally take you on like a photo shoot with me

you'll see that the way i pose is super duper nice and it's really really easy because i feel confident in what i'm

wearing as for the weather the weather is extremely

extremely extremely important because the sun controls the lighting and lighting makes

or breaks your picture for me i like to take my pictures

in the afternoon evening time the best time to take pictures is an hour and 30 minutes before sundown

what's really good about this time of year like spring summer is that the sun sets later the sun sets

at like eight o'clock so you have ample amount of time you get so many nice pictures but in the winter

the sun sets at like four so it's a lot harder to get good pictures in the winter time it's really nice about this

time of year which is the reason why you should really start building your instagram because it's like so nice and

easy now but for me i make sure the weather is at least sunny or partly cloudy and before for my

pictures i used to only take pictures in the sun to get that nice golden hour feel

but nowadays i take pictures in the shade i mainly take pictures in the shade now because of the iphone that i

have i have the iphone 11 and when i take pictures in the sun

i just look over exposed and everything looks really really weird but if you have like an iphone 6 iphone

7 or iphone 8 those iphones are the best for golden hour pictures like right now

i'm gonna put how golden hour looks on an iphone 6 compared to how golden hour looks on

iphone 11. on the iphone 6 it looks so much better then other than golden hour being

superior on the iphone 6 iphone 11 quality is just better so on the day that i'm taking my

pictures i usually like to wake up nice and bright and early and do my makeup routine in terms of my makeup i

try to gravitate towards more matte makeup i want to put lots and lots of powder on my face

because when you take pictures your face tends to look really really oily so you want to put

extra powder to make sure that's not the case also i kind of just amplify everything

like if my lips are glossy i want them glossier my brows are dark i want them a little

bit darker because on camera everything just kind of washes out you know

as for my equipment i like to take this tote bag that i got from zara i got it right before i moved to

philadelphia then i also take my iphone because that's usually where i take all my pictures on this is the iphone 11

pro max i used to have the iphone 10s max but i dropped that in the toilet and

then i had to get a new phone i usually take this bluetooth tripod i love this tripod

because it's not too tall i tend to take lots of outfit shots so i would want the angle to be pretty low so

it gets my entire body so what i like about this one is that it's pretty short it's not expensive it's like 25 i'll

have it linked down below and also there's a bluetooth clicker attached to it so you can kind of

click and then take the picture and i also bring makeup touch-ups if i'm getting a little bit

oily i bring some powder i also need to bring my lip gloss and i also bring a hairbrush to fix my

hair before i take the pictures this is location that i'm going to be shooting at today

this location may look really familiar because i've actually shot here before okay guys so actually when i came here

yesterday my camera died right when i got up here and it was terrible so it's actually the

next day and i'm here and i actually already posted a picture that i was going to

take here and show you guys how i did but i'm back again with a fully charged camera and i'm

going to show you guys exactly how i did that even though i look completely different from the photo that i just

posted this is the location i shot that picture in it was basically a full body picture so

that's what i'm going to try and do today so when actually taking my pictures

first thing i do is set up the tripod and get it to the angle that i like

this probably takes a chill 20 minutes if i want to get a full body shot then i position the camera to be

about hip length i also like to optimize the grids on there because i make sure that i'm

centered when i take pictures by myself i use the back camera i know what you're wondering

how are you going to be able to see yourself if you're using the back camera so basically i take a little item

usually i use my clicker and i put it on the floor then i reposition

my camera to be centered and be exactly where i want it to be and then after i position it the way i

want i go to the clicker that i put on the floor i pick it up i click and that's usually the angle

that works best for me and also i try to hide the clicker as best as i can

my go-to is just putting the clicker behind my back that's why a lot of my recent pictures on post like this

because i'm actually hiding the clicker but obviously you can hide it in your hand

you can hide it in a bag there are a lot of different ways to hide the clicker and also

i adjust the lighting on the camera app so basically how i do this is i go to the camera i go

to where i am i hold on where i want to focus and then it will show this

ae lock on the top and then you want to go to where you focus and you want to drag up for

higher exposure than drag down for lower exposure and in terms of my go-to poses i go

straight tick-tock trip talk has so many videos of good pose ideas to do

so i usually just always keep that in mind whenever i'm posting and i do that over and over again and i

hope i get really really good pictures okay so i just finished taking pictures fake pictures

pictures i probably will post well i probably will put these pictures on like my spam account or something but after

i'm done taking pictures i put them in my plan only and see if it fits

um i just put the pictures in my finale for reference to see if they fit and they definitely do fit

so that means i'm done and i can leave but the work is not over yet because right

after i take pictures is actually the time where i go and scout for another location

so you guys will come along with me to scout locations [Music]

being here is actually kind of funny because i've actually already took in a picture here

like i took a picture right here right here before that's the one great thing about the city

literally everywhere is aesthetically pleasing okay guys so i found a location that i

think is gonna work really really well this these are just some stairs that i found

they're blue stairs this is kind of like a brownish door next to it i think i can

take some really good pictures here so here's what i'm gonna do i'm gonna go on my camera app

take a picture of it well it's not focusing but it says today at 2 33 p.m because that's the time it

is shows you where exactly you took it that you have the exact address

and you have the exact time in which you should be there so if you see these stairs in my next instagram post

pretend you didn't as for the editing of the photo um it's really different depending on

the photo because every photo has different lighting but my general rule of thumb

when it comes to editing is to go up on the contrast down the exposure up a teensy weensy bit

on the saturation adding more warmth to it i add more tint to it and then i also

sharpen the photo to make it look better quality one editing aspect that has really really helped me

is the expand tool and snapseed snapseed is a free app i can use to edit your instagram photo i

really only use that app for one tool and that's the expand tool basically the expand tool expands your

background let's say you have this great picture but when you put on your plain ollie

your face is cut off to fix that you would go to the expansion and expand your background so it's a bit bigger so

that when you put on your plain ollie your face isn't cut out so that's one aspect that i use

a lot and one aspect that i also use a lot is actually is this like vertical straightening

feature that's on the camera app if you have a picture and your head looks a bit big and your body looks a

bit short you can use this picture on the camera app all you do is go to the

picture then press edit then you would go to the um crop feature then you would go to the second one and

then you would drag it that would make this longer on the bottom and then this would make it

longer on the top then after the picture i posted and i try to stay as consistent as possible on

instagram and ever since i've been doing this i've been growing a lot

also reels and even though the rules made your account grow so much but i've definitely

been using lots of reals i've definitely been growing my account with reals and just with

high quality photos and yeah that's basically how i do it that's basically the end of the video if you guys enjoyed

it give it a thumbs up subscribe to my channel for more content from me i post every sunday and i will see you

guys in my next photo my next photo my next video jesus christ okay

bye guys