by Sara Tasker
When photographing making, don’t neglect to show the work in progress. Sometimes just the tools and materials laid out can set the tone of possibility and capture the quiet enjoyment of having half an hour ahead of you to work with your hands.
Be sure to capture the texture and mess of the midway point – let us see if you’re a tidy, organized worker or, like me, seem to endlessly spread out across a space. These tactile and relatable details all draw your viewer in and add nuance to your visual story.
Don’t be afraid to document the times when things go wrong as well as right! There’s a temptation to whitewash our world and only photograph the best bits, but the messes and mistakes in whatever we’re doing are often where the really juicy lessons lie.
When you’re done, consider styling the finished result to flaunt it in all its glory. You can easily end up with ten or so great images from a single craft activity, which you can then space out on your feed, share to Stories, post on blog posts or perhaps use to form a simple tutorial. If there’s a particular craft you enjoy, don’t be afraid to repeat it with different variables to create a series, for example floral wreaths or loaf cakes.
HASHTAGS TO EXPLORE
#makersgonnamake #wipsandblooms #slowliving_create (‘WIP’ stands for ‘work in progress’)
‘Instagram is at the same time a daily diary of my thinking and making process, an historical record of my improvement at my craft and the main way I share my work with my customers.
It allows me to be both highly personal and commercially viable. It’s made me a better photographer and writer, and helped to connect with people I’d never have known about without it.’
@jonosmart, Scotland
GETTING YOUR HANDS IN SHOT
There are a number of ways to get both hands into your shot that don’t require too much kit or preparation.
To keep it really simple, just switch your phone to self-timer mode, slide the phone between your teeth and bite down like you would on a cookie. Hit the shutter release then quickly slip both hands back in frame. It takes a little practice and looks completely hilarious in public, but it works a charm with no extra equipment required!
Alternatively, set up a boom arm over your workstation using a long plank or stick with a heavy counterweight at the opposite end. Attach your phone using masking tape or simply by balancing it with the camera peeking past the edge of your plank.
I’ve also had success attaching a twisty-legged ‘gorilla tripod’ to a hook in the ceiling.
If you do these shots regularly, consider buying a dedicated tripod with an arm.
Obviously, be extra careful when playing with your phone at a height and do your best not to drop it. I can accept no liability for injuries sustained while balancing on one leg, trying to tape your phone to the ceiling for an admittedly stellar Insta shot.
FOOD & INGREDIENTS
Have you ever seen a photograph of another family’s Sunday roast dinner or Christmas meal? Often they look wildly unfamiliar, despite being assembled from the same essential parts. Food is deeply personal. It’s full of ritual, history, social rules and constructs and a fair old heap of irrational morality, too.
For this reason sharing food can feel vulnerable and intimate – and can also foster a real sense of connection, too. It also has stacks of that ‘thumb-stopping’ click appeal when done well – just pay attention to how much more you’re attracted to images of food on Instagram before lunch versus afterwards!
Here are some things to consider when presenting food in your photography:
Share the history. The meals we regularly prepare and share come to feel familiar to us, like well-worn shoes – the smell of my grandmother’s recipes cooking always feeling like a sense of home. I weave this into my images by using her old baking trays, or including her handwritten recipe book.
Presentation counts. There’s a reason top chefs in restaurants worry so much about the presentation of their food – and did so, even before the days of Instagram! While for regular meals we’re mostly happy to just heap it onto a plate, when someone cannot smell it, touch it, taste it or know how carefully it was made, they’re left relying solely on the visual elements to decide whether a dish is at all appetizing or not. Think about how things sit together on a plate, where the negative space is, how the colours and shapes look together. Sound familiar? It’s essentially all the same things we look at when creating a composition – except this time, the frame we’re working within is the plate.
The wider scene. What surface is the plate on? What else is on the table? Are there other people sharing the meal? Can we see their plates and glasses too? Or, perhaps this is food in the hand, or food in preparation. Don’t miss out the essential clues around the food that give it greater context and significance.
HASHTAGS TO EXPLORE
#MyCommonTable #foodstylingclub #myopenkitchen #tablesituation
‘Food cooked in the kitchen and shared around the table is a five senses affair – sounds, smells, textures, tastes, colours – and even a sixth, emotion. When you’re styling and photographing food for social media you only have one sense to work with: sight. Your job is to creatively use that one sense to invoke the others. I’ve found the best way to convey other senses in my food photography is to use props that create a mood. Create life-like mess-like drips and crumbs that convey textures and tastes, incorporate action like steam or hands when appropriate, and (most importantly!) shoot food in natural light, ideally diffused or indirect sunlight, because that allows its true colours to shine and entice the viewer into both the moment and the flavours.’
@local_milk, USA
ROAD TRIPS & TRAVEL
Great travel photos can make the viewer feel like they’re right there beside you. From your local town to somewhere far-flung and exotic, the small details of your travels can transport your audience on a vicarious adventure. It’s one of the great joys that Instagram brings – making the global feel local.
There’s often criticism of the Instagram travel photography movement for taking people ‘out of the moment’ – leading people to visit destinations purely based on a photograph, and then spending their time gazing through a lens. While, of course, in the modern world we could all do with a little more mindfulness, I’ve personally always found photography makes me enjoy travel more. It makes me stop and see the beauty, appreciate the smaller things. It also makes me feel perfectly happy to while away an afternoon or longer by myself, just me and my camera, without feeling out of place or conspicuous in a strange city.
In fact, when visiting somewhere for the first time I’ll often start with Instagram when researching places to explore. You can always rely on the community there to have sussed out the coolest bars, cafés, beaches or monuments, and it’s a great way to get an up-to-date and crowdsourced guidebook to a brand new area.
HASHTAGS TO EXPLORE
#slowtravelstories #thewanderingtourist #traveldetails #glocal
‘Travel photography became my life simply because I followed my curiosity. I picked up a camera relatively late compared to many other professional photographers, but it quickly became the most natural way for me to express myself and over time it developed into my greatest passion and then my career. It’s the best way I know to share the world as I see it, and communicate what I learn as I travel to new places and meet new people. When you follow something that grabs your curiosity, it can change your life forever. For me that curiosity led me to pick up a camera and get to work on documenting the stories of people and causes around the world that need to be shared – I never asked for permission and I never looked back.’
@freyadowson, UK & Canada
SOME HELPFUL POINTERS FOR CAPTURING YOUR TRAVELS
Keep an eye out for the small details that contrast with your normal everyday. Different letterboxes, doorbells, roadside weeds and signs in foreign languages all hold interest and story in new places.
Give your adventure a beginning, middle and end. Sha
re your packing on Instagram Stories, and your arrival back home as well.
Avoid the obvious clichés. Yes, the clouds look amazing from the airplane window and I can never resist photographing them either, but like listening to other people’s remembered dreams, they’re often not as interesting second hand. Liven it up with an additional subject in the predictable shot – a book you recommend, a paper shape against the sky or a holiday souvenir.
Try to put your own unique spin on a familiar landscape or scene. It’s easy to find those perfect Instagram views and locations online, but often they’ve been recreated a thousand or more times. Visit these places by all means, but check the geotag to see what others have taken there, and try to find a different take.
Be mindful that you’re potentially broadcasting that your home is empty on the Internet. Make sure your home address stays anonymous online, and consider posting on a delayed schedule to protect the details of your itinerary.
Remember, people are not photo props! Always ask permission before any shot that features identifiable people at work or living their daily life. Be kind and respectful at all times.
WEATHER & SEASONS
The changing weather and seasons tell a story all of their own; the exact same scene is so radically different on a snowy winter’s day than on a hot summer’s evening. Autumn leaves, spring blossom, summer at the beach or the first frosts of winter – wherever you are, and whatever the climate, there are always beautiful signs of nature’s cycle to be captured on camera.
These seasonal moments tend to be popular online across the world. There’s a certain magic in seeing the different seasons on the opposite hemisphere, or how different the same day can look on the other side of the globe.
It has a way of tying us to our roots, as well. Throughout human history, we have found ways to map the movement of the year through the natural world. It only seems right that we should bring this practice to our online sharing as well.
Below are some prompts to help get the most out of the weather around you:
Shoot the extremes. Often the more extreme ends of weather come across best in images. Brilliant blue skies, deep snow, lightning streaks or a heavy, sudden downpour.
Look indoors. There are always tell-tale signs of the season, even indoors. The clothing and accessories we use in different weather are full of nostalgia and narrative. Muddy boots by the door; a bright umbrella, wet from the rain; snow-dusted mittens, a folded picnic blanket streaked with suncream and sand.
Capture nature’s best. No matter what the season, there are always quiet little clues to be found in parks and gardens. Whether it’s the first sprigs of green pushing up through the snow or a carpet of magnolia petals on the pavement, look for the special, surprising moments when you first realize change is in the air.
Create a mood. We love winter and autumn scenes that conjure up a sense of cosiness and warmth, and summer snaps that seem cool and refreshing. Look for ways to juxtapose the temperature outside with the subject of your shot – ice cream in the shade in summer, thick blankets by the fire in winter.
HASHTAGS TO EXPLORE
#stillswithstories #gloomandglow #stylingtheseasons #aseasonalshift
‘I love the contrast of the seasons. From moody January to the bright and airy June. It’s not just dark in Scandinavia, but there will always be shadows, and that’s what I love to work with. On earth there is no heaven, but sometimes, when I look carefully, there are pieces of it.’
@poppyloveyou, Denmark
OCCASIONS & CELEBRATIONS
Those red-letter days when we tend to reach for the camera form the staple of most family photograph albums. We can use our skills as visual storytellers to capture more of the mood and moments of these days, and create a mini time capsule to look back on whenever we choose. With storytelling and nostalgia already at the heart of our imagery, occasions and celebrations are a chance to crank up our emotions to full volume and really capture the heart and soul of a joyful – or in some cases difficult – occasion.
Look for the details. Everything from your guests’ shoes, the choice of birthday candles, the empty chocolate-smeared cake plate – it all forms a part of the narrative.
Photograph instead of hoarding. Cards, gift-wrap, deflated balloons. I kept it all for a while after my daughter was born, then realized I could photograph the messages and sentimental details, and keep those safe in a way that didn’t leave our home overflowing with paper clutter.
Record things you’re liable to forget. What’s the weather like outside? What were the drinks served in? What song was playing on the radio?
Mark rituals and traditions. From the snack waiting for Santa Claus to an empty place setting for a deceased relative, special occasions are often full of love, magic and meaning.
Document the people. Include their faces and figures, of course, but also look for the details – a grandparent’s weathered hands carving the turkey, tiny baby feet walking in a sea of discarded giftwrap and ribbons.
Connect and share. If family occasions are difficult, or special occasions are painful for you, sharing and creating can be a welcome way to connect with people outside your home. The wonderful diversity of the Internet means you’ll always find people dealing with similar experiences to help you cope – the #joinin hashtag on Twitter, for example, brings together people spending Christmas Day alone each year.
HASHTAGS TO EXPLORE
#GatheringsLikeThese #festivefaffing #tableinspiration
‘It’s always difficult to explain the magic that happens when a group of women gather around a beautiful setting and bring their whole selves to the table, but Instagram has given us the opportunity to share that warmth in a way that draws people in with curiosity and delight.
Capturing a gathering in full flow and sharing it is a beautiful way to hold the memories of that connection and that intimacy. It brings it back to life and allows for the magic to continue.’
@melwiggins, Northern Ireland
MAKING A HOME
Our homes and interiors are the backdrop to up to 99 per cent of our daily adventures, and say a whole heap about our tastes, thoughts and experiences.
When I first joined Instagram I was living in a small terraced house that I hated. While I was grateful for the roof over our heads, it had none of the elements that make up a home for me, and all of my days there were tinged with a bleak sense of anxiety. The big picture of my life right then was all wrong for me, so I focussed in on the small one instead. Photography gave me a way to zoom in and find the small, manageable elements that I could arrange to my choosing. With each of those little squares, I found my place in that house, and a way to feel at home with myself, instead.
It’s common for interior design to be regarded as silly or trivial, yet our living spaces can have a tremendous impact on how we live and feel in the day to day. Styling a beautiful shelf, arranging a wall of magazine clippings and prints or picking a simple bunch of flowers for the kitchen table can all impact on mindset, mood and motivation in small but significant ways.
It isn’t silly to care about the small things around us and the details of our home. Sometimes they’re our best defence for resilience in a difficult, painful and too often ugly world.
Find the small things. A corner of a shelf, a patch of light in the kitchen, the way your kid leaves her boots on the step by the door. Especially in rented accommodation it can be hard to make a space that feels 100 per cent reflective of ourselves, but the details are always at our disposal to play with and enjoy.
Share the mess! It can be tempting to edit and tidy up just for photographs, but there’s just as much magic to be found in the realities of domestic life. A crumpled unmade bed tells so many more stories than a perfectly folded and manicured one; the muddy trail of footprints my dog brings in from the yard is endlessly more entertaining than a perfectly clean floor.
Style and play. Photography and Instagram gives us the perfect excuse to get involved in our i
nteriors and play around as often as we would like. So often we fill our homes with lovely things only to promptly ignore them from that day on. Whether it’s reworking a shelf to get the perfect #shelfie, or bringing seasonal finds in from outdoors to join in with #stylingtheseasons, spending time enjoying our interiors instead of just reluctantly cleaning them once a week came as a revelation to me!
HASHTAGS TO EXPLORE
#pocketofmyhome #atmine #shelfiesaturday
b
‘When entering a home to photograph it, I love to take a few moments to wander through the rooms, pausing to notice the areas that the owners have poured love and attention into, and also asking for the memories behind certain pieces. These are often the corners that best share the story of the home and the life lived in it, and which create photos which accurately portray the heart of the home.’
@abbie_melle, Australia
BEAUTY & DRESSING UP
The Internet has proven to be a natural home for beauty content, with a whole gang of fashion bloggers and make up experts sharing their work and talent online. It can feel quite intimidating, if you don’t identify as one of these people – particularly when your body doesn’t fit with the conventional stereotype of beauty or style.
But forget that. The Internet is a huge human soup of diversity, and by showing up and sharing our real, gorgeous, imperfect selves, we can all help to increase the representation of every body, and celebrate our style and individuality along the way.