Sunday, October 10, 2010

Tried and True - Pictures for your blog

When I began blogging, one of the most time consuming things I had to do is adding pictures to my posts.
Not only did I have to be able to take good pictures, there was also the process of selecting, editing, and uploading.
Now, you may think I'm exaggerating a little, but as a blog reader, you guys know how important visualization is. Not only does it provide more information on products, but it also perks up a blog.

So how does one take and add "proper" pictures to a blog?
Well, it all starts with the placement.
If you're going to photograph makeup, you need to figure what you want to show.
If you're going for the pretty packaging, then you need place the products in a way that showcases it to its full potential.
If you're going for swatches, your skin needs to be clean and swatches should be ideally done where you have less hair. Your forearm works well for this.

Now, when taking pictures of your face to showcase a look you've done there are certain extra steps you should take.
Make sure you over do it a little. When you use flash photography, the intensity of your makeup will be toned down a bit. You want to make your blush just a little more intense, you want to pack your eyeshadows just a bit more, and you want to make sure you're shine-free.
Now, how do you get that perfect picture?
For each picture you want to upload, take 20 of them.
Crazy?? Well yeah, I may be crazy, but it works.
You know how in professional photo shoots, photographers take hundreds of pictures and only end up using a couple? Well that's because not all of the pictures work, you need a wide selection to choose from.
I usually end up taking about 50 pictures of my face in different angles and poses. Then I upload them to my computer where I do a fast delete of the obvious duds.
Anything where my eyes look funky, blurry, or where my face looks too "fat" is deleted.
I usually end up with 20-30 pictures. Afterwards, I preview the pictures in full screen if possible, and by then I start getting a vision of what will look good with the particular post I'm writing. By this point as I'm going through each picture, I'm cropping each one. Big backgrounds have to go, anything from my shoulders done is cropped as well.
If I'm doing a closeup of my eyes or lips, I take the time to choose and crop those pictures at this time as well.
Now, after all that is done, I upload them to a photo hosting site like photobucket.
Not all of them make it though, I usually end up uploading from 5-10 pictures that I consider to be the best.
After they have been uploaded, our work is not yet done!
The width of my blog is at 500 pixels, so I resize accordingly.
If I'm showing multiple items, I label each one with its name and shade.

Once all of that hard work is done, we are ready to post the pictures to our blog.
Generally I finish writing the post and mentally figure out where I want the pictures.
For this particular post, I've decided to put them in the end. You'll see why when you get there.
After I'm done writing, I proofread, and get all of my links ready and just add them.
At this point, all of the pictures that have been uploaded to photobucket are acceptable, so choosing which ones go on a post is entirely up to you.

Let's see how this translate visually.

Uploading Pictures
Photobucket

Selecting the best ones
Photobucket

Uploading to Photo hosting site
Photobucket

After cropped, resized and edited
Photobucket


I know it seems like a lot, but this way you ensure that your pictures are crisp, sharp, and gorgeous!
I hope this has helped you in some way, let me know if you need any help with your own picture posting and let me know if you have some other tips I may have left out.
Bye guys!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is a great post! Truly! Nothing I didn't know already, but I KNOW this will help others. I am crazy about taking a ton of shots. I <3 Photoshop for that reason.

Jeannette said...

Hehe, thanks Callie, I know it's pretty basic stuff, but I thought I show how I did it and maybe help others who are just starting out.
:)

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