Instagram has become one of the very top players in the social media scene, so folks pay a lot of attention to trends and developments on the platform. When it comes to specific imagery and the like, it’s perhaps the most important of them all.
Subscribers are constantly on the hunt for innovative ways to present themselves on the site, from learning how to take sexy selfies all the way to ideas around branding and marketing themselves or a business.
Pick a Purpose
When deciding on a profile picture your first question should be, “What is my aim for this pic?”. Coming to this fundamental answer really allows you to take a direction with some certainty, even if it’s only a general direction, to begin with.
If you’re looking to represent a brand or business, then that’s a particular approach in which some formality is required. If, on the other hand, you want to get across something about your fun-loving personality, then that’s a very different angle.
Lighting and Filters
For the most part, clear lighting is your best bet for almost any picture. Ensuring that you have plenty of light falling onto the center of the image is crucial for clarity. Even in cases where you want a murkier effect, this can always be added afterward.
The filtering functions on modern cameras and phones allows users to do almost anything to any digital image. Again, if it’s for a personal profile, you can just have fun with it, but for the professional side, you might want to hold back on the effects where possible.
Give Yourself Options
A lot of folks will spend ages trying to arrive at that one perfect photo, and in the effort, they tend to become frustrated. A neat idea here is to give yourself some wiggle-room by selecting a general idea and then snapping a whole range of pics.
That way, you can cover areas that you might not have otherwise. You might surprise yourself when you see that the results aren’t what you expected, and maybe even in a really good way! It’s an old photography trick that still works.
So, you go for a broad thematic approach and snap away like a banshee until you feel you’ve exhausted the theme. Then, you go back through the pics to find one which jumps out at you. You may find that it gets surprising results.
Cropping
Given the limitations of the profile picture, you’re going to have to be quite strict with yourself. Instagram is among those sites accessed largely on mobile devices, so you have to pack a punch with your pic.
Body-length shots are usually not a good idea, and nor are pics that are trying to gather too much into the image. The screens on mobile devices are just too small to cope with all the added detail. Cropping down to essentials is the popular way.
The best choice is usually to limit yourself to simpler and more compelling images, which could be branding or logos, but most folks like to go with a lovely face picture by default. Our faces are our most potent identifier, and other people like to see them too.
Concluding Thoughts
The most important thing to remember is to have fun with it all. When you have fun, it shines through in the imagery, and other people instantly pick up on that. Once you’ve covered that bit, there’s almost no barrier to what you could produce.
After all, the appeal of Instagram lies in that same flexibility. It allows you to express even momentary things, which can be changed at a moment’s notice. What suits today’s you may not quite fit tomorrow’s you, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
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