How to make your Instagram Photos Epic

Want to make your Instagram photos epic? Here are some tips for transforming that photo from your smart phone into something worth sharing.

Before and After Editing with the Instagram Edits

Since launching my blog only a year and a half ago, I’ve learned so much about photography. I’ve taken one photo lesson and asked friends who are professional photographers for some tips, but for the most part, I am self-taught. I use a Canon EOS Rebel T5i for 95% of my blog photos and an iPhone 6S for most of my Instagram photos. I typically have my iPhone with me because it takes surprisingly great photos, and after I edit them, they are even better. I should mention that always use one of the Instagram filters, my “go to” filter is Clarendon because it makes the photos brighter and more saturated, but I also love Juno and Ludwig for the depth that they add to a photo. For fun, here is a link that you’ll love if you are interested in knowing about which are the Most Popular Instagram Filters around the U.S. and the World.

Below is a photo of a New York City bridge that I took with my iPhone while I was in a car driving to the MetLife Arena in New Jersey with a group of friends. We were on our way to see Lenny Kravitz who was opening for Guns N Roses (Guns N Roses! I know, what was I thinking?). The sun was setting behind the bridge and even from the car it looked so beautiful. I quickly snapped a few photos and didn’t think much about them again until a couple of nights ago. I was flipping through my photos and decided to see what would happen to this photo if I made some edits using the Instagram photo editing tool.

| The original, unedited photo |

Below are the before and after images and then step-by-step how the photo changed with each of the different edits I used.

| Contrast: I decreased the Contrast to bring the shadows up and the highlights down |

| Structure: I increased the Structure to add a high definition effect |

| Saturation: I increased the Saturation to make the colors more vibrant, you can see the blue sky now versus the previous image where the sky looked gray and the green in the trees comes alive as well |