Instagram is quickly becoming our favorite and most used social media outlet. A few weeks back we blogged about how we use our Instagram photos (you can read about it here). Today we wanted to share with you what we have been up to this spring via Instagram along with a few Instagram photography tips and tricks. We document EVERYTHING on Instagram from food we make and eat, to time spent with those we love, to house decor, even previews of weddings and sessions we’ve photographed. It arguably is the best camera we own because it is ALWAYS with us! Is every photo meticulously composed, exposed, or thought out? No, it is us literally documenting life as it happens and it is a beautiful tool to have!

We have come up with just a few tips that we have found useful with iPhone photography. Others have written much more extensively on this topic, but here is our little guide to improving your Instagram photos.

1// Find good light! If you are wanting to photograph your awesome new Starbucks mug or a new piece of home decor, move it to a place where there is natural window light. In some cases it doesn’t hurt to wait until the next day if you get an instagramming urge when it is already dark outside.

2// Turn off your phone’s flash. We never ever shoot with our iPhone flash on, ever. We are not saying it can’t be done, but you will be surprised how much your iPhone photos improve if you just use ambient light (Cases on iPhones can really throw off the flash and wash out the picture as well).

3// For iPhones, tap on different parts of the picture before you take it to get a focused and relatively well exposed image. If you tap a darker part of the picture, the overall picture will get lighter, if you tap a lighter part of the picture, the overall will be darker. Oh and try not to use the zoom feature, move yourself instead to get in closer.

4// Try an app other than Instagram to edit your photos. Instagram is great for sharing! We don’t love it so much for editing, it doesn’t give us near as much control as we would like over our images. We have been using an app called PicTapGo for about 90% of our iPhone images and love it! Photo editing apps are very inexpensive or even free sometimes… so try it out!

5// This piece of advice is the most important… Ignore all other pieces of advice if it means missing a moment. Don’t miss capturing an important memory for the sake of trying to get a perfect image. The memory should always come first!

This spring has been huge for us! Between purchasing our first home, to welcoming our pup Nora into the family, to spending amazing time with each other and people we adore… we wouldn’t trade these memories for the world and having a tool like Instagram at our disposal helps us remember it all! Oh and if you want to follow along, our usernames are @bradleyjamesphotography and @samanthav519. We’d love to connect with you there!