Instagram is an important channel for a lot of hair and beauty artist, which only makes sense—a visual platform naturally fits well with a visual industry!
Creating compelling content that showcases your value is so important to make sure you are standing out in a saturated market. A poorly shot photo will mean that your potential client will just swipe past your images of your work or not be enticed to dig deeper and see what your business is truly about!
If you are unsure on how to improve your photo abilities and you feel like you keep trying things, but your results aren’t improving – i’m going to teach you how to get a gorgeous after pic!
TIPS TO GET BETTER INSTAGRAM PHOTOS
1. MAKE TIME FOR PHOTOS IN YOUR APPOINTMENTS
This may seem simple but how many times have you been booked back to back and then before you know it a weeks gone past and you have no content. Make sure you allow an extra 10minutes at the end of your service to snap you pretty work and not miss an opportunity.
Make sure you clean up your background and get any used tools out the way, set yourself up for success so when you shoot you don’t look back to your photos and realise that you left something in the picture that shouldn’t be there.
2. ALWAYS ASK YOUR CLIENTS PERMISSION PRIOR
A lot of your clients and customers are going to feel self-conscious about their photos being blasted out all over social media. In fact, 90% of your guests will not want to have their faces posted all over the internet, and you need to respect that.
If they are uncomfortable ask if you can zoom in on the details – say you’ve just performed some lash extensions and you want to capture the eyes,
Politely ask your client that if you crop out her face – will she let you nab a quick photo.
3. LIGHTING 101.
I have tested SO much lightening over time – and i’m very blessed that my studio has enormous windows that allow natural light. Theres one thing I know for sure and that’s natural light light trumps artificial light any day
We always recommend that you take pictures with indirect, natural lighting. It does wonders!
If you don’t have access to natural lighting the next best options are ring lights – these are great at brighting up the details in your shoot, you can get light ring stands from Ebay that are affordable and do the job well!
If you’re looking to invest in the next step up then the Glamcor light is also beautiful!
4. TAKE PHOTOS AGAINST A BACKGROUND THAT’S COHESIVE WITH YOUR BRAND
With any client hair photo, you want the focus to be on your client’s RESULTS—not anything else! Photos where the client is still in the bed with a visible background, or where the salon can be seen in the background can cause the hair to get lost amongst all the other details. And that’s no good.
Don’t have a plain wall in your salon you can shoot photos against? Luckily, you don’t need to just use a white wall. Buy a backdrop or scope out a perfect place to get indirect lighting, even if it’s outside or down the hall!
5. TAKE A LOT OF PHOTOS.
Once you’ve had a client agree to let you take their photo, you want to get as many usable photos as possible. So take more than a couple of pictures! Take 20; take 50,000 if your client will let you! This will come in incredibly handy when you need fresh content to post to your social channels on a rainy day.
6. TO EDIT OR NOT TO EDIT?
A lot of stylists think that it’s cheating if they edit their photos before posting to social media, but we’re here to tell you that it’s perfectly fine. Not only does virtually everyone edit their photos—it is, simply put, a powerful tool to make your content stand out!
Editing is personal preference and my rule of thumb is that if you are not effecting that actual workmanship, then it’s totally fine to make your photos pop or to curate your brand. It’s important to avoid over editing as this can have the opposite effect and end up spoiling your work.
As the tech has developed over time the settings in your phone have too! Your phone comes with a great set of tools that I highly recommend playing around with to test what suits your style.
