5 Tips For Creating Impactful Photography

Photography has always been a huge interest area of mine. When I was young I would look through magazines for hours, studying the amazing creativity found within the pages, often tearing them out and making collages on my walls. Inherently, I’ve always had an interest in content creation, but it wasn’t until I started working in advertising and seeing how things are brought to life behind the scenes that I realized how much goes into it. I started to grasp the importance of understanding foundational techniques of photography in their creation.

What makes a photo interesting? What elements are at play? How do you take and edit images (and even video) to be ones that are thoughtful and purposeful? That tell a story? Sure, we all love to look at visually appealing things. But to understand the thought process and techniques that go into creating visuals is something totally different.

I often joke that I “think in squares” — meaning a great Instagram opportunity is like candy for me.

In general, photography is a big reason why I love penning this blog, and even Instagram, so much; it’s a way to express creativity. Furthermore, It’s an area that I continually am practicing and trying to improve on. And, while I’m definitely still learning, I believe that through my work in the industry, being on set at commercial and photoshoots, and practicing all the techniques learned for this blog and through personal photography, I’m starting to grasp and improve on core elements of the craft.

I often get questions from people asking things about my content, and thought it’d be helpful to put together some of the key things I’ve learned. No matter who you are, photography is a big part of modern life. We carry around cameras via our phones constantly, and it’s common to take photos often daily along the way, so we all may as well have an understanding of things to keep in mind/ways to improve!

Below are the top 5 techniques I use that I feel have helped for me to create better images. I hope these techniques will help for you to learn and take even more impactful photos than ever before!

5 Tips For Creating Impactful Photography:

Understand The Rule of Thirds

This rule helps to create a well balanced image with great composition, and it’s the most commonly used composition rule in photography.

It’s actually fairly simple! While taking or editing your photo, think of your image within a 3 by 3 grid. The lines here, and each of the points of intersection, are what drive the rule of thirds. If you place your subject on a point of intersection or line, the theory is that a viewer’s eye will engage with the photo more naturally.

For me, thinking in photos in the rule of thirds is an easy way to capture and edit the photo to be visually appealing. Below are some examples. (It should be noted that rules are sometimes meant to be broken! You don’t have to use this rule to have a great image — in fact I break it all the time when I place myself in the center of an image — but it’s a great composition element and theory to keep top of mind and to practice!)

Pay Attention To Lines

Stop for a moment and look around you. Pay attention to the many lines that make up your setting. (Lines can be horizontal, vertical, diagonal, and irregular. Anything from a tree-lined forest, to a sidewalk, to a bridge.) They are present in the desk you work at. In every room of your house. Composing the streets you walk on. They’re even a part of you.

When you’re taking a photo, particularly with settings, lines are a powerful tool to leverage for composition. They can help to evoke a mood and can effectively draw an eye to a focal point. Working with lines is a powerful, and simple way, to help to make your photograph more purposeful and interesting!

Some examples of line usage, and the thought processes behind each, are below!

Storytell

What are you trying to communicate in the photograph? Think of the key message, and then brainstorm ways in which that photo can play into that message even further.

Every photo is an opportunity to storytell, and I’ve found that the most interesting images are created by tapping into or emphasizing that story or purpose. Don’t be afraid to bring in props, get a little weird, and have fun.

Creating an interesting photo can come in many different forms.

It’s all about leveraging your setting and subjects to play into the message you’re trying to convey. To me, it’s a creator’s ability to showcase a new or interesting way of storytelling that sets them apart from others. Also, I believe this this is why influencers such as Olivia Rink or Tezza are so successful; they storytell in engaging ways that always leaves me continually curious as to how else they’ll bring photos to life.

Drive Great Composition

There are a ton of techniques and rules that photographers practice while creating imagery (leveraging lines, and the rule of thirds, are great examples of this!), which help to drive great composition. This article and this article provide nice overviews of common composition techniques, if you’re interested in learning more!

What helps me is to think of establishing great composition with one key notion in mind:

A viewer’s eye should be naturally drawn to the subject of the photo. Whatever composition techniques are chosen should naturally lend to the subject matter at hand. Simply paying attention to this in your photography can help to create images that are more interesting and purposeful!

Practice Editing Techniques

I’ve learned that editing is a huge element of digital photography. It’s everything from cropping an image to establish better focal points, to brightening an image if it’s underexposed, to applying techniques to help draw your eye to a subject. It often is what makes or breaks in image. Editing digital photography is something I’m really trying to practice more and get better at this year. Also, the more I practice it, the more I notice an improvement with my overall results.

In addition, editing is what helps to establish things like a consistent Instagram look/feel within the feed. (The consistency you may have noticed with Instagrammers is done by applying what’s called a “preset” to images, which helps drive commonalities in treatment between photos.)

The current preset I’m using is from Officially Quigley.

I changed up my presets recently just because I felt like I wanted a change of pace. My imagery used to be very “airy” and I want to challenge myself to bring more contrast and color into my photos. Other presets that I’ve used and love are ones from Jaci Marie, HB Goodie, and Greater Than Gatsby. (LOVE the ones at Greater Than Gatsby. I leveraged their “watercolor” presets on my blog and Instagram for a year before deciding recently to change it up!)

Taking your photos on a DSLR camera, and shooting in RAW, is an important element if you’re shooting professionally and are practicing photography more seriously. Shooting in RAW is essentially is a file format that captures all data from a photo, as opposed to compressing it like JPEGs do. For me, shooting in RAW is a key component to great editing, as it helps to provide more flexibility and options.

There’s really no right way to edit as it all depends on what you like and how you want your photograph to come to life! It seems a bit daunting and confusing at first, but my suggestion here is to practice, practice, practice. It’s a skill that you’ll improve on continually, the more you do it and the more you learn!

I hope these tips were helpful for you! What other questions do you have about photography? Do you have other tips that you use to create impactful images? I’d love to hear in the comments below!