How I shoot and edit my Instagram photos

Hair Romance x Olympus collaboration

Find out how I shoot and edit my Instagram photos with this peek behind the scenes.

I’m continuing my Behind The Blog series and today I’ll show exactly what I do before and after I post on my fave social media platform, Instagram.

You’ve already had a peek at how I take my hair tutorial photos with my feet, but taking a daily hair shot is a little different.

Instagram has totally changed over the last few years. It’s always been my favourite platform because I’m such a visual person, but whenever the algorithm changes, it’s a bit of a pain. These days there’s nothing instant about Instagram anymore. I try and post daily hair photos, but lately I love sharing other hairstyles I’m being inspired by and pics from my tutorials.

The quality of Instagram images has also lifted its game and this means I rarely take photos with my phone and upload them directly. I prefer to take my photos with my camera (I use this one) and edit them before I publish. Here’s a video to show you exactly what I do.

How I shoot and edit my Instagram photos

Click here if you can’t see the video above

Who takes my photos?

I do!

Sometimes I can make Jim play Instagram husband but it’s just as easy to set up my tripod.

If I’m not shooting a tutorial, there’s no need to connect up my laptop and use the foot pedal. The Olympus Share app turns my phone into a remote control that also has Live View.

Fun fact: My signature “Hair Romance” pose where I’m looking slightly down started because that was where my laptop sat on top of a barstool. The same pose still works pretty well when I take a photo with my phone.

I use my Olympus E-M5 MK II camera’s WIFI to transfer the photos from the Olympus Share App to my phone’s camera roll and then use some third-party apps to edit them before posting.

How I edit my photos

Back in the early days, we would use so many filters and borders (#nashville), but now I don’t edit my photos much with the functions on Instagram.

The Olympus app has some filters and makes it easy to watermark photos too.

I always use Snapseed as my go-to editing app. It can seem complicated, but I love these features:

• Healing brush – to tidy up backgrounds
• Crop tool – either classic square or 5×4 portrait are ideal for Instagram
• Transform – to straighten the horizon or shift the perspective a little
• Tune Image – general edits like brightness and shadows (Insta can never be bright enough!)
• Selective – edit detailed sections to give more definition

Once I’m done, I save it as a new image and head over to Instagram.

To filter or not to filter

My favourite Instagram filters are Clarendon, Lark and Juno, but I rarely use them at 100%. I drop the strength down to around 10-20% just to add that Insta feel.

Caption this

I always have the intention of adding in a witty caption, but I can never think anything. I swear I’m funnier in real life! I do like to ask a question or get an opinion though, as the conversation is the best part.

#Hashtag strategy

Hashtags are important if you want people to find your photos. You can currently include up to 30 hashtags in a caption. However, instead of including them up front in the caption, I prefer to pop them in the second comment.

I keep a list on my notes app (saves time typing them all out!) and I just copy paste them in a comment below the caption.

#HairRomance and #CurlyHairRomance

It’s easy to miss an @ tag or mention on Instagram, so I love hashtags. You can use #hairromance and #curlyhairromance to share your hairstyles with me and for hair inspo too.

So if you‘re not already following me on Instagram, I’m at @hairromance and you should also follow @Olympus_au and check out #Olympusinspired for more photography tips and inspiration.

Remember to use #hairromance and #curlyhairromance so I can see your hairstyle photos! Share your Instagram handle too so I can follow you back.