Mary, 29, a lady who has a cottage in a forest who may or may not be a witch and has the answers to life and everything (lol no, my motto is fake it till you make it), loved books ever since I was a little girl. If I could spend my whole day reading, I would. Life unfortunately gets in the way. It's rude, really.
Hi helloooooo there! ‘Tis I, Mary, here with a tutorial, of sorts, into book photography *cue applause* Now, I need to say this very clearly: I am not the best photographer out there. On the contrary. There are SO many amazing creators and their photos are absolutely stunning and I am but a humble human person looking up at them. But, hey, I can at least give you a place to start, right? :) Disclaimer: I’m not a professional photographer, everything I’ve written down is based on personal experience so please don’t @me that I’m not a Pro™.
The most important thing that I have to say is this: ANYONE can progress. You just need practice, practice and more practice. Add to that a bit of dedication, determination and patience, and I promise you’ll get where you want to. Case in point, this is how my “book photography” looked a few years ago:
No focus, no lighting, just a jumble of shit thrown around and voila! A crappy photo. I persevered though and a few years later I can safely say that I’m 100% for sure doing better haha :P
How do you get inspiration for photos? Photo challenges, my dudes! When I started on instagram, where I’ve really kind of grown into my skills (or, at least, stopped sucking), I used to just take photos of books in no particular order or with no guide and I ran out of inspiration SO quickly! But, the cool thing on Instagram (and bookstagram, more specifically) is that there are at least 3-4 people organising a photo challenge for any given month. Just pick one (or two, or three if you feel up to the task) and photograph according to the prompts! You’ll never run out of inspiration. Even if you’re not on instagram and want to keep to tumblr with your photography, there are photo challenges here as well, or just use the instagram prompts for your photos :)
Do I need a lot of props/merch for photos? Nooooooooooo. Nope nope nope. On the contrary - I’ve seen a LOT of people prefer more minimalistic photos. I think it’s more about what you’re trying to capture, than throwing a lot of shit into the frame to make it more flashy. Truthfully, photos with a lot of crap in them are never among my personal faves, because I feel that the books get lost in them. However, if props and merch are your jam, GO WITH IT. The idea, at the end of the day, is to take a photo you’re comfortable with and a photo you’re proud of.
Do I need a fancy camera? Nooooooooo. I don’t even have a proper camera lol. I take my photos with a Samsung something-something. I know tons of people who use their phones for photos and they turn out amazing. It’s all in how you frame it and focus it and phones nowadays are more than capable for the task.
Do I need to use editing apps? You don’t HAVE to, but ever since I’ve started using them, the quality of my photos has improved a loooooot. There are tons to choose from: VSCO, Snapseed, LightRoom, Afterlight, Photoshop, Unfold Instagragram filters and loads others. You just need to find what works for you.
Constantly play around - change angles, try flat lays, try outdoor and indoor photography, change focus, try close ups or bird’s eye view, play with perspective. This will keep you inspired and you never know what you discover that you’ll absolutely love.
Use natural light - I can’t stress this enough! It’s THE BEST™. You will thank me later.
Editing process - getting down to the nitty gritty. I’ll show you guys below my entire editing process (which, honestly, is a lot simpler than it sounds). I took my latest photo as an example, so here is a step by step.
1. The original photo looks like this:
Usually what I do first is work on tuning the image - I’m going for something brighter, because that’s what I’m into at the moment. I’ve taken photos that are full of colour, photos that have more of an autumn-y vibe, now I’m into more simplistic, white-ish photos - the idea is to find a look that works for you. The two apps I work with are Snapseed and Afterlight. First I upload the photo in Snapseed and use the tune image options - these allows me to fiddle with things like brightness, contrast and stuff. These aren’t set in stone and I usually tweak them depending on how the original photo looks. The only two things that I keep constant are Ambiance +50 and Warmth +15
Next up is the grainy filter, which is honestly a godsend and I would die without it. I use grainy filter X04 and always keep the same levels for any photo:
Depending on how it turns out, I might change the temperature of the photo, but not all the time. After all these changes, this is how the photo looks:
After I’m done with Snapseed, I move to Afterlight, for the precious dusty filter *praise the gods of photography* I always go with number 11, full, but there are 13 possible dusty filters to choose from.
And this is it! The end result looks like this:
Like I mentioned before - this is what worked for me and I spent a while until I finally found it. I started off by just using the Instagram app filters, then moved on to several editing apps until I found these two that I like (both of them are free on Google Play Store btw).
The idea is to practice and don’t get discouraged if you’re not seeing progress immediately. Keep at it, keep working on it and I promise you’ll get there :)
If you have any questions, I’m more than happy to help!
Loads of love,
Mary <3
If you’ve enjoyed this… um, article or whatever, consider buying me a coffee because it keeps me warm :)
It would be hella cool if you reblogged this - maybe some people need it :)
26 Jun 2018 @ 10:27PM / 
