Create Your Own Stunning Blog Photos to Go With Your Content

If you want to get more from your blog posts and social media, then you should probably start thinking of content as a lot more than just ways to generate traffic to your website. Instead, I’d love it if you started thinking of content as though it were a product of yours. Content should be exciting, stimulating, thought provoking and yes, a way to get traffic to your website.

. . and what better way to make your content exciting and stimulating than to place original photos with your content to make your words and your content beautiful, relevant, and stand out. Having stunning visuals can make a huge difference to the tone and impact of what you write: so it’s no wonder we get a lot of interested bloggers coming to Ivory Mix for free stock photos to place with their content.

There is one problem though? Getting stunning images from our stock photo library isn’t difficult to do, but making it exciting and unique can be. You see, I give a ton of tips for making the most out of stock photos. I even created a styled prop kit, which is almost like creating your own photos. Plus, I created the Premium Stock Photo Membership to create exclusivity for our audience.

All of this is to help make your content exciting and unique, but .. at the end of the day, using stock photos will never be as good as creating images for your specific blog posts! That’s why I eventually created the Create. Capture. Conquer Phone photography course and offered custom photos as well .. . and because I’m now a full-time business owner and photographer who creates visual content for a living, I know the value of a great image and the impact it can have on your content strategy and goals.

So, to go a step further beyond everything I’ve already mentioned here, I’m creating a free blog photography series. This post is just an overview and a taste. But, the series will be multiple posts and tutorials. So, before we get started, if you want to get updates on this series for when I post new tutorials, you can grab a seat here and I will make sure to send you 12 lessons right away, plus all of the new posts and updates throughout this series.

You can also watch this blog post as a tutorial on creating blog photos in this video below:

Remember:

An image you create yourself will perfectly suit the topic of your blog post rather than looking generic and only vaguely relevant.

Fortunately, if you can invest in a good DSLR camera or already have a decent phone camera, then you are ready for this series and will be ready to create your own blog photos in no-time. You’ll just need to follow along with us as we discuss how to take your skills to the next level.

• How FOCUS can add a dreamy and professional look to your photos
• How to use COMPOSITION to give importance to the objects you’re photographing
• How to use your photography inside of your blog posts to TELL A STORY

Focus

One of the most appealing looks and best tricks for creating an image that will look professional is to use what is called shallow depth-of-field . What this basically means is that you are going to place the object you are photographing in the extreme foreground of your frame while taking the shot. You’ll want to then focus on that object so that everything else behind it blurs into the background.

This is fairly easy to do on a smartphone or a DSLR. Let’s just say that you have a smart phone, you simply need to double tap on the object and make slight changes to it’s distance from your camera until the camera locks on it’s focus.

Grab these 12 FREE Photography lessons to start creating your own blog photos and stunning social media contentIf you have a DSLR you can choose your ‘manual focus’ and then changing the focus until it looks just right, but the key here is making sure your aperture is as small as possible. This is shown in increments such as f/5.6. Going to a number as small as possible, like f/4.0 will give you that beautiful blurry background. A wider aperture like f/11 will make the background less blurry.

 

Composition

When photographing something up close like this, whether it is a mug, a phone, a dumbbell or anything at all, it can be a lot of fun to get a more extreme and dynamic angle. An upward shot of the object will make it look larger and more important as an example. Taking the shot  downward will allow you to give more focus on related objects that are near by your main object.

Pro-tip: Don’t just shoot objects head-on.

Take a moment while you are taking your photos to think about more interesting angles and positions that you might take. How about putting the subject on the left-hand side of the shot?  What could you add in as another piece or prop to the photo for scale?

Storytelling

When getting ready to take photos for your blog and content, you should try to have a clear understanding of what your objective is. What is it that you want your photo to tell in a story. It shouldn’t just decorate your blog posts and pages, it should add to your content as examples or to keep your reader up-to-speed with related visuals.

Telling a story with images doesn’t always mean showing something in action. Often it means that you are simply showing the aftermath or maybe the set-up to an event, an idea, or a lesson and then letting the audience fill in the blanks.

Grab these 12 FREE Photography lessons to start creating your own blog photos and stunning social media contentThis makes them a more active participant in the image and thereby creates something more artistic and engaging.