Transcripts
1. INTRODUCTION: Hi, guys. Welcome to this content creation caused by myself on Caroline. We are so happy that we're able to finally launch this course and share our knowledge with you guys. We've been working day and night during the past four months during the whole quarantine and isolation period, and now we can finally share our knowledge with you. I also want to say a huge thank you to everyone who went ahead and purchased the course. We think it's gonna be really beneficial to you guys. It's basically us put in six years of our knowledge together, working full time on social media, welcoming brands, creating content and just building a business. So we're really looking forward to sharing our knowledge with you. The course has been set up, so there you can just pick whichever lets it that you want. There's no particular order because, as we know of content creation, there's some things that you I know a lot about, and there's also some things that you just need a little bit of extra help with. So it's time for me to say thank you, and I really hope you will enjoy the course a really hope you will just improve on your consecration. And I really hope you gain extra knowledge in whatever it is that you want to learn in. So effective guys support the course on enjoy the lesson.
2. How to Tell a Story with your Content: hi, guys. And welcome to this lesson on storytelling. Now storytelling is so important. If you're creating content, it doesn't matter if your photographer influencer or just anyone who's creating content online. It's so important that you tell a story with your work, and it's so important that you get it correct with storytelling. This basically inspires people. It provokes an emotion on a feeling which basically just has a big impact on someone. If we're creating a big impact on someone, this is basically how someone's gonna feel attached to your work, which in the long one is gonna grow your audience without storytelling, your work is gonna feel uninspiring. And it's just gonna get lost amongst this amazing group off really great photographers that are able to tell a great story. So it's really important that you tell a great story with your work. So that's basically what we're gonna be doing today. I'm gonna be showing you my tips throughout the years of content creation on how I tell a story with my work. I'm also gonna be showing you some influences on photographers that I feel really inspired by, and we're just gonna go through their work to see how they tell a story with their photography as well. So that's what we're gonna be doing. Really excited for this lesson. Let's get started straightaway. So number one that is planning this is key to telling a great story. You kind of want to think off photography now as like a storybook. So I need to have a beginning, middle and end on with any great storytelling. You need a plan. Gone are the days of just turning up with your camera and expecting great results. There certainly great photographers out there. We need to try and stay on the same level as then. So basically, when me and Caroline have an idea, we sit down, maybe mumps weeks or even days before we shoot, and we just plan out everything. This includes props, locations, people involved. We just write down everything we want. Sit down on a big white board marker, but you can also write it down on paper or even use your computer as well whatever you find . Easiest and whatever helps you the most. But you need to make a detailed plan, and that includes everything. Once you've got your plan, this is gonna help you so much more in creating your content. And you're not just gonna get lost when you turn up with your camera. You've got everything planned out. You know, everything maps out in your head, and this is basically gonna be the first thing you do when you create your content. So now I'm gonna show you a set of images I think I took last year. We go every single season to this apple orchard to pick apples. Now, this is where we start to plan our content. We didn't just turn up here and start shooting. We made a detailed plan before. We kind of had a rough idea and head off the location. So we already had a rough idea of the the pictures we wanted to take. We wrote them down, and we also went into finer details such as even the clothes on. We also knew that the kids they were gonna want to sit in the Wilbur Harry like they do every single year. So we knew that was gonna be a shot as well. We also concentrate on the finer details of the shot, such as close ups as well because his is what really adds to a story. So you really need to go into fine detail when create in your story. Now, using Instagram Paracels is also really important and we're just gonna talk about that now . So if you're using Instagram Teoh, create your story, One of the things I would highly recommend is using the carousel now with every single one of my posts. Now, I tried to post at least a minimum off five images within one post. You can use 10 but you want a NBA free between five and 10 to create a great story, basically group all your images together to tell a really great story within that carousel . Now, at first I was really worried because I fought. I would have to create 10 images every single post, and I felt a little bit overwhelmed. But now I'm focusing on on actual storytelling off my photography rather than just focus in on the amount of concept that created. So I'm posted now, once every 3 to 4 days, rove into a day, and I found that really helps with just making a bigger impact on my audience. So really used their Instagram Paracels. They are really great for making a story come to life, so number free and that is using angle. So when you turn into a shoe, it's very important that you capture everything from far away close up. You should details. Portraiture is any kind of abstract images that you can get just to put everything together . So this is basically gonna make your audience feel inspired and engaged in your content is gonna keep him swiping because they're excited to see the next post. It's really important that you do this. I'm gonna show you now a great friend of mine, Jack Cardin's work, who's a travel and lifestyle photographer. If you're into lifestyle and travel, then you probably know off Jack is really great at doing this kind of work. We just gonna look. It is working out to see how he captures his audience by using different angles. So this is Jack Hardin's Instagram account, and as you can see, he is such an amazing photographer. I really love his work on. I've been really great friends with Jack for a long time now, but let's just look at his storytelling by using angles, which is gonna click on this post. I think it's this one. That's a watch promotion. So it's just Jack with the watch. Then you click across. He's got a detail of the watch of really beautiful image. Click across again, and you've got this really nice landscape e detailed picture, which is really adds to the image as click off on its click on this whiskey Ada's Well, it's just Jack out in the nature shot from Really Far Away. And then you got close ups of the Whiskey and again, a really lifestyle image of Jack and again, a really beautiful image off the West case. As you can see, he's using all different kinds of angles to capture his story. This image in particular I really love again, shot from a distance to capture the nature element. And then he goes right in close onto the watch, which is really beautiful, the way it's done, and Jack is always really good at in nature elements to his posts, and I think that's a really great way to add really great storytelling to your carousel. So, yeah, that is Jack Hardin's instagram account. Give him a follow if you don't already really great at story, tellin just photography in general that the greatest gift any photographer could have has been able to capture emotion within their work. Emotion is so powerful, and that is number four. I did a motion to your images is basically gonna create a really strong feeling with your work. And this is basically what's gonna be really keeping your audience engaged. It's so important that that this is done naturally, it's not staged in any way whatsoever. So if I'm treating my family, I'm gonna be standing way back with a lens. And I really want to capture all these different emotions that are going on for other day. If it's not done naturally, then your audience is gonna know straight away. And it just makes you all content feel a little bit put on, which is no, always good. So this is why I love wedding photography. There's so many emotions and feelings gone going on in that thing. So many different body language. Is this happiness crying laughter, tears all these kinds of feelings you want picking up on on as it wouldn't photographer that it's so good for me to go into the situation and just pick off all these different feelings and emotions. Now some of the greatest photographers have seen you've probably seen them as well. It's the street photographers that say, for instance, in New York is capturing all the emotions from people on the streets. Now this is when I've really seen the most powerful imagery because it really tells a story . You can just have a picture, a portrait, a really simple portrait, and you can really see the level of detail that's gone into this post, and you can really feel the emotion. So that's what I really recommend when creating a story is tried to capture these emotions and feelings within your photography. So Number five and that is creating a mood with colors is kind of goes hand in hand with capturing emotions and feelings. But now we're starting to use colors to capture that into our stories, and it has really big impact on a story without even realizing. So if you focus on the red spectrum, this is basically gonna pick up a sensation on joy, intimacy, passion, any kind of fiery moment you're gonna get with a warm reddish colors On the other hand, if you're picking kind of cool blueish tones that this might give a feeling of unhappiness , loneliness, com or just being in isolation, so, as you can see, has a really great effect on our story. I know a lot of influences over the past few months at that have been focusing arm kind of the pastel colors. This gives a feeling of playfulness from vintage bite from the sixties. So you really meat stuffing it about now, which kind of colors you are adding to your story. So now I'm gonna show you a great friend of mine, Fran, who is an amazing photographer. And he is so good at capturing mood using colors. His work has changed slightly over the years, but it always seems to have a really great feeling, and that is mainly because of the colors he is using. I really love his photography, and we're just gonna talk through that now. This is Franz Instagram Page, and as you can see, I'm just picking up so many different moods with his photography. It's so calm and relaxing. I'm picking up so many through vibes, off isolation and loneliness. It's all shot and a really common way. And that's mainly because of the cool blues. His using completely different to like fiery reds just get in such a nice, common relaxing feeling with his photography. He also uses words sometimes on its images, which also adds to the story tellin and as you can see, is also using different angles to shoot his images. One thing I will say about Fran, every single post he uses is using the carousel, and usually it's a minimum of 10 images he really maxes out on that carousel, and it just really tells a great story. Includes the cat, includes the words and just really uses these colors to tell a story. So you plan your shoot, you've got up to shoot, and you've captured some really amazing images. You fought about emotions and feelings. You've got all these different angles that you've taken on. You fought about all the different colors you're gonna be using. Everything's ready to post your uploaded it. That's one thing that everyone always forgets. That is captions with a great story comes great words, and it's so important you don't forget right in your caption. You might have amazing set of images. But if you know right in any words that feel anything, then your post is probably still going to feel good. But then just adding words to your great imagery, it's gonna pull away your story together. It's so important that we don't forget it, and I'm gonna show you now a photographer, that I've been falling for many years. She does great photography, but she also writes a really great captions. This just goes hand in hand with each other. Sometimes I can sit there for hours trying to think of a caption to write, and I'm among I'm honestly, really bad with words, so it could take me days to even think of a caption. But don't rush it. It's really important that these two go hand in hand together. So let's just look at Martyr Marie's work. This is Marta Marie's Instagram page. I was really lucky to work with Martin on a project we've done together in France, and that was when I started following martyr. One thing she is so good at is writing words, and it just makes a story come to life, especially when the photography is so good as well. So here she's just talking about what it's like during her quarantine, just telling a story of what she's been up to, and it just makes a really great story. Her words are so beautiful, and it should definitely check her out. If you don't know her already really, really inspiring stuff on the next post as well. She's just telling a story about being back in Norway and what the Norwegian day really means for her. So she's really great storytelling, but also great photography. And as you can see, it just goes hand in hand together to really think about Ryan have really nice caption to go with that image. The now let's talk about location details and how that is important that's used New York for the example. So if I'm going to New York and I want to capture a story on that city, and I would capture everything to do with food that people street star buildings, locations, everything that I'm empty gathered together to create a story on New York, don't go to New York and sit in a hotel and do some stories from there because basically you could do that anyway, you do a home. So if you want to do a great story, go out there and focus on the location details now going to show you a great photographer, Alan Polenta, wherever he goes. He's really great capturing on location details, whether it's a city, a country, he's really, really great. So let's have a look at that now. This is Alen Palander, and if you're a photographer, I'm short. You're fully aware off his work this just scroll down his feet and he can see whatever he travels to his really great adding location details to his story. But it's just click on this particular picture because it's from Copenhagen on were from Copenhagen, So just want took for this one. This is knew how, which is the biggest tourist attraction in Copenhagen. So he's gone to Copenhagen, and for okay, I'm gonna pick up in Newtown is using vintage cars, shooting and puddles to create that really Copenhagen feeling image. Lots of different street star images just all add into a story. Just click on any picture, and it's the same kind of thing this is in Italy is using all kinds of different images to create a really story on the streets. So that is it for May on this lesson on storytelling. I really hope I've given you enough advice to go out there and start taking pictures and put in your story together. The biggest thing for me is that everything is planned. This makes everything so much easier for May, and the rest is really your photography skills. Anyway, I really hope you
3. How to Build an Engaged Community: Hi, guys. Welcome to this lesson on how to build an engaged community on social media. It doesn't matter if you're a small business, a big business content greater or just a photographer. If you're using social media to build your platform to build your brand than building an engaged community is so king now. I built up most of my phone in the 1st 2 or three years, probably six years ago. Very early on, I focused on building a really strong community around my brand. Now, obviously, since that time there's been people that have followed. There's been people that have just had their accounts deactivated, or just people that no longer want to use social media anymore. But the majority of my follows actually come from the beginning, and there followed May all up until now, there, full of my whole journey with work with my family and in today's lesson, I'm gonna show you how I kept the majority of my forwards from the beginning. Until now, off say there is new followers as well that you also need to focus on. But I'm just gonna show you everything on how to build an engaged community to help focus building your brand and your business. So you're probably wondering, why do I need to build a strong community around my brand now? Basically, if you are selling a product, if you're trying to push your work out there, building a solid foundation of a great community around your brand is basically what's gonna take a brand to the next level. It's basically what's gonna make you grow, and it's basically what's gonna make you even better in your business. So it having the strong, engaged communities really loyal to you and you're really honest of them. It's basically what's gonna take your business to the next level. Now there's people like footballers who never do interviews. There's people like real big celebrities that never replied to comments and basically what that is going to dio. You're gonna lose the connection with your audience that's so important that you do not lose that connection. So you really need to focus on building a strong communication with your audience that might be replying to comments that might be doing interviews. We're just gonna talk through everything at the moment, but I just wanted to quickly say it's really important. And this is the reasons why we build a really strong community around up Brown, because this is basically what's gonna take you to the next level. And it's what's gonna grow your business. So how do we focused on that? So let's get started of this diagram on a draw. We've got an overhead camera I hope it's gonna work on. We've got whiteboard on a market were basically the first thing we're gonna do is write down engaged community in the middle, and then we're gonna work from there engaged community. Now, the first thing that you want to think about is basically just write down all the content that you're gonna be creating so content this could be images. This could be video. Could be interviews, podcasts or any kind of behind the scenes footage behind the scenes. Sorry, if you can't read my writing racy. This is the content you're gonna be focused on for your brand. Now it's very important that with every single piece of content, they out there and you've heard me say this word before is that its niche? Now? Being niche is key and this is how businesses grow in this day in age on social media right now, if basically niche means your focus in on one kind of thing now, previously over the years have really lost being nation on. That has really affected me on my social media channels. That is because I'm sure I just love taking pictures off everything on. I share my work all the time. So I'm sharing pictures off landscapes where I traveled to. I'm sharing pictures off the work that I've created. So fashion posts showing pictures of myself. I'm sham pictures of my family as well. It's all a bit mishmash, and no one really knows what they're gonna get by being niche. Basically, you're gonna have a really strong, engaged community from the beginning. So let's say you are a gardener. By starting a garden in page and just focus in on Garden in, you're already gonna have a really big audience with people that are interested in gardens . If I follow in PlayStation, I want to know everything about PlayStation. I don't wanna be No, I don't want to know stuff about Xbox. I don't know just random things. Everything that I go to on that page, I want it to be PlayStation related. Now you should use this for your brand as well. Do not get distracted. You really need to cut your losses. And this is what I'm really focusing on in 2020. I'm just focusing on at the moment is what I really think works best for May, and what people really like to follow me for is being a family guy. And so that's what my niche is. At the moment. I'm really focusing on that, and I could really see that people are really liking it on. I'm already building a really engaged community within that sector as well. So if you are brand or business, really cut your losses and focus on being nature. This is really, really kid. But anyway, really important to be niche. Let's talk about the next one. The next one is storytelling. I've also spoken about this in other lessons on this is also key Now. When me and Caroline met six years ago, we had a really nice story. We basically we've been talking to each other for two months online, and then we decided to meet up. I moved. I flew Teoh, Denmark, from England to meet up with Caroline. Basically, with one week I moved in. It was a really crazy story. But the good thing about that crazy story is that people felt attached to us. We're really honest. We were really open with our how we met and we were just really honest about everything. And basically, this told a really nice story. People felt attached to us on our instagram channels in the very beginning is when we grew the most because we were just telling a really nice story. And ever since then, people have been following us on our journey. Now, if I'm working with a brand and let's say, for instance, lost Last year I was working for Brand Well, I was in charge of running s social media channels. They had some really great content, some of the best content that I've ever seen, but they were really missing. They couldn't work out why they were not growing on social media. Now, for a brand is really important that you focus on storytelling Now, I went in there and I was really focused on this. The first thing I done was brought a plan on how I can tell a story off that brand. The first thing that I don't was I went to visit, although manufacturers off on all the products that they are making. So I went to Portugal to do, went to the shoe factory to see how they were made. I went to Italy to see how the fabrics are made. I was in interviews with just the people that were running on the brand, talking about how they build up the brand in the business and what they're focused on now. That account grew so much in that year because I was telling a story. People felt attached and they wanted to know more about the brand. They wanted to know everything with the product that they were buying. They weren't now just going into a store, picking up something they wanted on not knowing anything about it. They knew everything about the brand, from the fabrics to how it was made and the people that was making it. So it is really important. We focus on story 10 as well as being a niche. So you got nice, you got storytelling. Now it's important to focus on value now what I mean by value is if someone is clicking on your instagram page clicks on a picture, they want to begin some kind of value out of the post. So me and Caroline, we run this house for Innovation Channel on every single picture we sit down and work out. Is this picture that was posted right now? Is it valuable to someone? What is someone going to get out of this? Is it? Entertaining is a tutorial is a deal. Why is it just advice on your first home? Basically, every single picture we post on that channel, we are provided value to someone. Now, this might be a little bit more tricky if you are a photographer or a small business, but you could basically do this in any kind of way. So if you're a photographer, you can literally say how you shot the image you can right capturing than at the bottom. You can say which sends It was shot on watch equipment resumed in but friday of value to someone They are basically going to feel welcome into your your world. Your your your brand, your Brandon. This is what's gonna make people come back to your channel. They're gonna come back every single time you've posted because they feel valuable. And if someone is feeling valuable, then obviously you're gonna have an engaged community. They want to come back to see more. So really think about value. What can you provide to someone? What can you give them? Because basically, they're going to give back to you. If you're not providing value than then, they're not gonna give any value back to you. So if you post a picture they might not like it. They might not share it. So it's a two wave being. You need to give someone something for it to be returned. That's really, really important. So now we've got niche, we got storytelling on, we've got value. And the last one that often people really forget on it quite often annoys me. So I talked about previously a lot off big influences, a lot off sportsman, a lot off celebrities. They really just missed communication with their audience. Now I'm not. If you're a big celebrity and you have a big if you busy all the time, then you might not be able to do this. But I really recommend having some kind of communication with the audience. You want to have a conversation back and forth on everything that you do. So if I'm posting a picture and someone asks, how is this image shop? I'm basically gonna reply straight away. I'm gonna like the comments. I'm not gonna ignore anyone. If someone is coming to my direct message, I'm basically gonna reply to them. So what made Caroline do is every single evening we sit down on, we communicate with our audience because we know especially to Children. We dont be on our phones the whole time, so make a specific time where you sit down and you communicate with your audience. That's by like in comment in answer in anyone's questions. Anyone's needs just to make sure that some kind of communication going back and forth Now, when I was working for this brand last year, there wasn't really any communication at all with the audience. Someone would say, What sizes does this come in? We're gonna find this in store and there was no riel, strong communication between the brand on the actual person that was buying the product. So it's so important that you focus on the communication. This is basically what's gonna be building your brand building your audience without communication. People are just gonna forget you. They're gonna go somewhere else because people really like to be spoke about before valued and they want to have some kind of communication. That's basically what social media is. Is making a conversation back and forth between you and your audience on a lot of people. Forget the whole communication thing and it really annoys me a little bit. This doesn't just mean like and commenting on other people's pictures, it's basically going onto their profile as well, and just engaging with their content on this is really strong. If you're a photographer, it's really important that you just share each other's fourth backwards and forwards. So now you have niche. You have storytelling, you have value and have communication. These are gonna be the four things you should focus on to try and build an engaged community. Now, the main thing with all of this is consistency. This isn't just gonna happen overnight. You really need to be consistent with everything that means consistent with all your content that you're producing the images that videos that interviews the podcast that needs to be in each. So you really need to focus on that consistency. Do not deviate from that, Really? Stay in line with your brand image. Your brand focused. Just be in nature. So really consistent with that, Consistent with your storytelling, consistent with your providing values to everyone and just consistent with your communication. All of this is basically gonna make everything like an equally system. So basically, this is gonna be round and round. So if someone clicks on your instagram post, then the likelihood is that post will take them. Teoh, let's say YouTube than the YouTube might be a video talking about pod class and then the podcast might have a product in that you've been talking about were produced. I think this is gonna be like a point system. Someone is invested into your brand, and they're just going to spread it out over and over around this engaged community. So it's really important that you focus on consistency really, really important. So that is it for this lesson awning building and engaged community really important that you focus on these four factors if you really want to build a strong audience that is on social media now. The main thing to take away from this lesson is just to make sure that you're communicating with your audience. You're listening to them. You're hearing them. You're telling your story. You're being niche. You're giving everyone what they want. But Carolina night, we also have the same where it said private but personal. So basically everything that we post on social media is private. We're not gonna be sharing stories about our relationship. Our kids, just all the bad things are going on in our lives. But basically we are still being personal. We are still gonna share off use. But this is some things you want to keep to yourself. It's not really worth talking about because it could potentially damage your brand as well . But you really need to be personal. You really need to be honest with your audience to help build that storytelling within your brand that communication. So if you haven't really about hey, then tell your audience that if you've been building products for a year and it's not going so well, then tell your audience that it's really important that you're very personal, but just keep things private at the same time. It's a really fine balance, but just focus on that. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the lesson on. We'll see you on.
4. Equipment Needed to Create Content: Hi, guys. Welcome to this course. Over the next few lessons, we are gonna be exploring everything you need to know about to get you started with content creation. In this lesson, we're gonna be talking about a with equipment you might need. And then we're gonna move on to learning about the camera basics and then whichever APS that you might find useful to help you get started. So I picked up my first camera around six years ago. I had no previous knowledge about photography, and I actually never used the camera before. At the time, I had a lot of spare time on my hands, so I picked up the camera kind of just as a hobby to get started. And then it developed into a career to what it is now. So I've been using social media now for around 10 years. I'd say it's such a long time now. Anyway, I've been using INSTAGRAM for eight years. I've always been interested in content creation and just producing nice images without even picking up a camera. I always used to shoot on my iPhone. So justice the post at it all on my phone and uploaded to instagram that way. It was at a time where influence in marketing and hadn't really taken off yet. But Brand started to notice the importance off social media presence on. That was when I decided that I really needed Teoh. Take advantage of that and just maybe explore the possibility off upgrading my equipment. Now the first thing that I've done is I went out to buy a camera, but DSLR camera. I've never used the camera before and I just jump straight into it. And this is the first mistake I made when purchasing equipment because I got this canon camera. It's really old now, but it was cheap. I thought, you know, this is what everyone's used in. This is what I need to create content. I got it home started shooting in and it took me like, honestly, I gave up within two months because all my imagery was blurry. I just did not know how to use it, and I was still shooting on my iPhone. So that was when I made a decision to get a more easier camera that was more manageable for me to use in my daily life at the time I was doing a little bit of model in here and there , and I got asked by Olympus to be their campaign model here in Denmark. No, as a photographer, but just as a model. And I was lucky enough to get my hands on one of these Olympus pen F cameras. And Caroline got the smaller version that Olympus pen, which at the time this camera was like the ultimate blogger camera everyone was using it on these cameras is actually what sparked our interest in photography. It got us motivated. It was really inspiring to have a bit of equipment that you could use. It was producing great results. Always eso this camera was actually what really helped us get motivated with photography. Using the old DSLR camera, I was so demotivated. After every single shoot I get home, All the images were blurry. There wasn't in focus on Yeah, there was just really, really bad images and I was really put off by photography. So having the right equipment is essential for creating your content on. You must make sure that you are using the right camera for your right level. Now, from my personal experience, this is one of the reasons why I really wanted to do this lesson, because I have brought so much camera equipment that I have not used. And I brought equipment that is expensive that rarely gets used. And I think it's so important when you're starting off in photography that you have the right equipment because equipment is expensive and you don't want to be wasting your money . You want to invest in some good quality products that you're always gonna be using. You don't want to be spending money that's just gonna be put into the back of your your equipment shelf like I've done with a lot of this equipment that I've got here today. This is what is really important for me to do this lesson on talk about all the things that are must have on some of the things that are nice to have. So I'm gonna go through all the equipment that I have now and talk about which is essential and which is nice to have. So this might be something that you used now and then You're not using it every single day on your daily creation, so let's get started. So at the very first bit of equipment that you need. Tohave is obviously a camera. Don't be like me and go out there and buy a camera that you don't need to go out there. Explore research. I know a lot of camera stores now. They give you the opportunity to go out there and test the camera for the first time for a day. Maybe. I know now I go out untested re lenses for the weekends, and it's absolutely fine. So go out there, do the research. Find the right camera that suits your level. That's very important as well. You don't be buying a big professional camera. If you're only starting in photography, start off with a smaller DSLR camera or a smaller point in shoot just to get the Fillion off camera, learning the basic settings, and then you can gradually move up if you need Teoh so you might be sat there thinking, OK, which camera there would choose. Now, this is such a minefield out there that is so many different types of cameras to help you with your content creation. Now this all depends on what kind of content you are creating. So for instance, if you're just doing street, so images, fashion images, you might just go through a smaller point. Shoot GoPro's for action sports. This, like Sony cameras for video, is big DSLR cameras for high production campaigns like this. So many different options out there for you. You just need to figure out which kind of content you want to create and having some kind of goal in the background off the content you want to create in the future. So go out there, take your time, get hands on field and do some research. So the next needs toe have. I must. And these are the accessories that come with your camera without these, you know would be out to use a camera or create the content that you need. So these are things like factories, SD cards, memory card readers on external storage dependent on how you are in your images to the computer and how you are storing them. These are obviously essential, and these are a must in your camera equipment. So your first nice toe have it's eight backup camera Now I got a backup camera, I would say two years ago, when I started Teoh. Take photography more seriously because I needed a backup grammar with me when I was on big photo shoots, and especially for weddings. Now I have two cameras with me at all times, because if one breaks, I'm still able to use the other camera. Now. This is not essential. That is why it's a nice to have, because cameras are expensive. But if you're taking photography more seriously than I would highly recommend, just having an extra camera with you just in case is any problems that might arise. I remember when I was in Scotland, I dropped my cannon camera and I was on a shoot and actually broke, and I wasn't able to use it on shoot. So I was in the middle of nowhere with no over camera, and I had to cancel my work and my job on that trip. So if I had another camera with May, then I would have obviously been able Teoh continue my work. But the first nice to have is a backup camera. The next thing you need to think about is which kind of editing program you are going to be using. So you've gone out you've taken lots of amazing images, you bring them home, and now it's time to edit. An editing program is a must, because this is what makes your photography, and this is what develops your style. Now I use Adobe. I pay a monthly subscription to use their services in photography. I use light room to edit all my images on in video. I use Premiere Pro, so I used Adobe Services. But it all depends on what kind of content you are creating. And you can just use your iPhone as well to use different APS the different app. So I'm gonna be showing you that we recommend later on today. So don't worry about that too much. We just need to figure out which kind of editing program you're gonna use which ones you find easy and which ones you find really, really useful. Let's quickly talk about lenses. There are so many lenses out there, it is crazy. Lenses are expensive and they are a investment. When we first started, we started with a 35 millimeter lens that we were able to use for pretty much anything. It kind of suited us with the content that we want to create. So I must have is a lens that you're able to use to suit the content that you want to create. If I'm sure in landscapes, I'm not gonna go out there and buy a portraiture lens on vice versa. So you need really need to figure out which lens you want to use for your content creation . Now what's nice toe have is a selection off lenses. So, like I said before, lenses are expensive on in my camera bag. Now I have built up a nice collection off lenses that I'm able to use for different scenarios. Lenses are generally more expensive than actual body itself, so it's really important that you pick one good lens that you're able to use a long time. So now that's quickly talk about lighting. Lighting is so important if you are taking your photography to the next step. But if you're a beginner photographer, you don't really need to think about lighting too much, and this is a nice tohave. But like I said, if you're progressing in your career, you really need to start thinking about which kind of light and you might need for your content creation. So in our camera bag we have a flash, which is the most typically used source of light with camera photography. This is used for events such as weddings, which we do quite often. And then we have these video lights, which often used to light up a room when we're doing video production. So, like I said before, you just need to figure out which kind of light in suits you and again, this is a minefield. You might have studio lights, you might have outdoor lights. He might have strobes. You might have lights for makeup tutorial. That certainly lights out there. But you just need to figure out which delight in suits you the best. So let's talk about a tripod on. This is the next need to have. This has been the most valuable piece of equipment I have ever invested in. I've used it probably every single day for the past five years, and the one that I'm feeling went on. Now it's just like a £7.1 from Amazon, really, really cheap, but the most valuable thing I have ever purchased. We have two kids a lot of the times, creating content with two of us is quite difficult and I traveled to lots of different Rembert remote places such as Scotland, Iceland, Faroe Islands on I travel quite a lot. To bring in my truck would with May, allows me to create content on the go. I'm able to set the camera up, said it on self timer, and create content just by myself without having anyone else with me. So investing in a tripod is a must. But obviously the main use of a truck would is to make sure the camera is steady, so I use it at weddings, so don't get any shaky footage on. I know a lot of landscape photographers that use them all the time, so they want to get their images really, really sharp without holding the camera. A lot of the time. Landscape photographers shoot on a low shutter speed, which will explain later. Basically, you need to shoot on a tripod for that. Another really good use for tripods is creating flat, laid or still life displays that you need to have really, really sharp, stable imagery. So it's setting up a truck would fall flat. Lays is a really great way to get stable footage without getting into any awkward situations. So moving on from tripods, there is all different kinds of equipment that you can use to stabilize your for church. One of them that I would not recommend. It's his guerrilla part. I brought this two years ago because everyone was using them. My four. I need one of these because everyone else is using them, but I've actually never used it. It's good for blogging, I guess, because you're able to just hold it on film. But it's not steady. And if you want to attach it to like a tree or a pole, these things are so stiff are probably just used my tripod. So every nice thing to have when you're doing video production is come kind of Steadicam. So in our equipment we have the G I. Ronan s. Now this is used for professional uses. So when we create in video consent, when we're creating commercials, we always use this. But there is also smaller ones like that one for the GoPro. This one's for iPhones now and so basically there's pretty much steady cams for all kind of equipment that you want to use, But yet I'd really invest in a Steadicam. If you is creating video, it just stops the shaky footage. You can have the nicest material, but if your material is shaky and wobbly, then it's just not gonna be very nice. So really, look at investing in a Steadicam. If you are creating a video, I don't really use one of these. Just use a tripod. So let's quickly talk about drones now. These are obviously nice toe. Have you're not gonna need these in your daily life. You're gonna need them for your daily content creation. Even as a landscape photographer, These a nice to have. You don't really need these to do landscape photography on also with video work. You know, they are nice to have. You don't need them. One of the things I would say about drones is that when I first got one around four years ago, you could pretty much use it anywhere. But now, in most countries, you need a like a pilot license on. In many countries, they are now illegal. So just make sure to research which country you are pushed in your drone on the laws and guidelines that you need to follow in your country because you don't abide drawing. They are quite expensive, and you don't get in trouble and not be able to use it. So that's very important when buying a drone. So now let's quickly talk about backdrops. Now backdrops are usually found in a studio set in. It's like two poles with paper rolled down on. You might use a material as well. Now this is used for photo shoots, so you don't really need to use these in your daily content creation. One of the things I would really invest in if you're not able to have access to a big studio and there is little colored bits of paper or card. So if we get a brief from the client, for instance, if it's a really feminine female perfume and we needed to create some concept for this, we could use lots of different pink paper. We could set it up on a table. We could put it on the wall. We could create a really nice backdrop for this perfume when we don't have access to a big studio, could still get the same effect, so just invest in small, different colored bits of paper card. But obviously this is a nice to have is no need to have. So now we have explored all the equipment you might come across and you might need for your content creation. It's very important you don't go out there by the very first thing you see. It's important that you go out there investing time, do some research, get hands on feeling, do some reviews and just ask over people. This is a long term investment. Camera gear is expensive, and it's important you don't go out there and waste the money. Buy something that's not needed for your daily content creation. So that is it for this lesson. Hopefully, I've given you an idea on which kind of equipment you need on which kind of equipment that you don't need. Teoh best in just yet. So thank you guys for watching
5. Camera Basics: Hi, guys. Welcome back to the course. And in today's lesson, we are gonna be talking about how to use your DSLR camera. Put a very first time. So we've talked about all the equipment that you're gonna be needing to create your amazing content. And now it's time to dive into the basics off the camera settings and how to use the settings in a practical environment. Basically, just what you're likely to find one picking up the camera for the very first time. So it doesn't matter if you're using a big DSLR camera, smaller point in true or just a knife phone. It's so important to understand basic camera photography aid on the different setting is that will likely feature on your camera. This is basically going to make you feel more comfortable with the camera. It's gonna make you feel comfortable taking more images, and it's just gonna develop your style in general in the longer term. So that's basically what we're gonna cover today. So let's get started. So let's get started with the very, very beginning. You've got your brand new camera. You got your batteries charged. You're excited to use it, and you switched on and you're ready to go. So how do you use it now? I'm gonna start off with the very, very beginning. So all cameras, digital DSLR cameras come with the shutter button, which is very, very obvious. But just trying to figure out where this is on your camera is gonna be the first step to create in an image. So this is basically just the button that you pressed to taken image. Very straightforward, I know. But then you're likely to have a view finder. Now, this is the thing you look through to compose your image, depending on which camera you are using. Your lucky to see many different things. When looking for your viewfinder, you might see a grid system. You might see lots of numbers or letters, but don't worry about them too much right now. I'm going to explain them later on in more detail. But just figuring out a way of shut up and is where you viewfinder, it's It's gonna be the first step in you taking a picture. Now. One of the features I always look for when I'm purchasing a camera is to make sure that I'm able to get the image on the back of my screen when I'm taking a picture. But sometimes I need to get into awkward situations where I'm sure, above or to the side, and I'm not able to get my eye to the viewfinder. So having a set in allows me to see and compose the image on the back of the screen, which is very, very useful. So before we dive into the different settings and the different modes on your camera, I just quickly want to touch upon the lenses on your camera. So it basically one of the things I really want you to understand it zoom so dependent on which lens you're using. I'm using this as an example. It is my very first. There's a lot Camera feels very old now and really my but I'm gonna use it as an example. So this lens is an 18 to 55 millimeter lens, which basically if you twist this, it brings you closer to the subject and then for away, so dependent on which lens you're using, you can use the zoom brokers to bring you closer to the subject on Forever away Now. Typically, I like to use fixed lens is because they are always sharper. But with this, you don't have the same feature, obviously. So basically, this doesn't go two awards you or forever away. This is a fixed lens is an 85 millimeter. So if I need to get closer to the subject, I'm obviously gonna have to move myself physically to the subject. Or if you wanna get forever away than I obviously have, toe come back Now. Another feature on these lenses on the professional ones is that you haven't auto focus on a manual focus button. Now you're not gonna have this on the lower range lenses, but on the professional lenses, you're gonna have this feature. So basically, the auto focus is obviously the lens focus in itself, which I highly recommend. If you are a beginner, I very rarely use manual focus. I only use it if I'm trying to create some kind of really our picture where I'm getting some blur. So I never really use manual focus, so always keep it in auto focus. If you are a beginner, then another feature you might have is a stabilizer bottom which is on and off which basically is important. If you are doing video, you're gonna get some stabilizer in the lens. You're not gonna get any shake or wobble, so yeah, just wanted to quickly touch upon the lenses before I moved on. So now it's time to jump into the different modes on your camera. Now, picking up the camera, you're going to see a little wheel on the top. Now this is full of different letters, different pictures, and I remember as a beginner photographer, this was a very scary moment for me. I did not know what they meant, and it was like mumble jumble in my brain, and I just didn't know which set into put it on. But I'm gonna tell you now what you're likely to find on which sit in is probably more useful for you. So let's jump into that now, too. Let's start off with the very first feature that you're likely to find on your camera on is the most used set in for a beginner, and that is auto. So every single camera, if it's DSLR or digital, you are most likely to find this setting, so just switch it to a on the dial, and this is the auto set in. All we need to do is just point and shoot on. The camera produces an image off what it thinks is a perfect image. Now there's good and bad things about the auto, and I'm just going to talk about them now. The good thing is that when I first started photography, I used this mode for like two weeks, and it allowed me to get the right composition off my images. It also allowed me to feel more comfortable with the camera. Now the bad side is, and one of the things I started to learn very quickly is that you don't have any control of your image. So the camera thinks for itself and you don't have any control, what so ever. So if you wanted something overexposed or under exposed, or if you want something with a little bit more blur, you had no control of this. So this is very important to understand Andi use when you're developing your imagery, so I just want to touch upon auto very quickly. So let's talk about the different priority murder to almost like me to find on your camera on which priority mode is most beneficial to you. Your most typically find an aperture priority on a shutter priority, and I'm going to start off with my favorite mode, which is aperture priority, which is typically a V on your camera. So without confusing you too much aperture basically means the size of the opening off the lens when you take a picture and is usually used to control the background blur, or how much off the subjects you want to be in focus. But the only thing in a V mode that you need to think about is the F stop number, and this is basically the only thing you need to change. The rest of the camera is gonna think for itself, but basically understanding the F stop number is going to really help your photography. Now I've set up an example behind me where I've shot two images, one with a low F stop number one with a high F stop number. But with aperture, the only thing you really need to understand is the lower the number, the more blurry the background is gonna be. Now, if you shoot in portraiture and you really want a soft, blurry image feels really airy. You're gonna be sure in a low F stop number, usually around 1.8. And if you want everything to be in focus for, say, example, landscape image, then you'd crank that number right up. So everything is really focused. Everything is sharp on the lens is narrower, so everything is gonna be really crisp different to the lower F stop number. But let's have a look at the example. So let's look at these two pictures that I took earlier with the setting behind me. As you can see, the picture on the left is short at a very low left stop number F 20.18 And as you can see in this image that the plants are in focused on the background is blurry. The picture on the right. It shocked a high F stop number, and as you can see, the picture has everything in focused. If you compare it to the image on the left. On the next party mode is shutter priority. This is how fast you want the shutter to move when you are taking a picture. Now, this is very important when you're shooting, moving objects. So if you're shooting an athlete or if you're out in the nature shooting some wildlife and you really want to capture that moving objects and you want the subject to be really, really sharp, you typically have it in shutter priority mode. So basically, in the set in all you're doing again, it's controlling the numbers that controls the shutter speed. And I'm gonna show you two examples now. So let's use a moving object to explain shutter speed. The image on the left is shot using a lotion to speed. And as you can see, I was unable to capture the object when it was moving quite fast. It's blurry, is out of focus, and you can't really make out what the object is. We cranked up the shutter speed, and we was able to capture the object when it was moving. Every is clear, everything is sharp and everything is in focus. So dependent on your subjects that you're shooting, you need to adjust your shutter speed accordingly. Now, in both of these protein mostly might come across and I s phone number or an ice oh number . Now, this is basically your camera's sensitivity, so light. Now, this is all dependent on the environment that you are in. So typically, if you're shooting outdoors, the lower number, the better on inside. If you need it to be a brighter image, then you need to crank the ISO number up. Now, obviously, this has an automatic setting as well. But typically, the more higher that I so more grain, the more noise you're gonna find in your image. So you want that to be as low as possible. So here are free images to explain. I so when dealing with over exposure. So the first image on the left is kind of the perfect picture. Or for that environment, it was shot at a very high I so naturally. But this is what was needed for the environment. And as you take that number higher as you can see, the image gets brighter. The highlights are more defined. This is over exposed, so you need to find the right eye. So for your environment and on this image, here is an example of when the ice oh number has been too low and they actually need a lot more like coming into the image. So every single picture. As you can see, it's getting darker and the shadows are more prominent and you can't really see what's going on. So, like I said before, you need to find the right by so for your environment. And here you can see the impact it has on your image if you choose the wrong number. So the very first picture that we were looking at before I've just zoomed in on a picture that had the wrong number. And as you can see, there's lots of noise is lots of color noises. Lots of grain on this is what you don't want. So as you can see, this is the importance of getting your eyesight correct. Now let's talk about exposure, and basically what exposure is is how light or how dark your image is Now. This is where it gets tricky because all the things we just talked about the aperture, the shutter speed on the ice a or controls exposure off your image, whether it's light or whether it's dark now, controlling one is gonna have the effect on the other. Now, this is the thing you need to think about in the manual mode. You need to control all these free fundamentals yourself. Now, how I learned this was using the exposure triangle. This really made me understand what exposure Waas on how each set in helped control that light in my image. Another feature you might come across on your DSLR camera is a white balance feature. Now, this is basically so you don't have any undesired colors in your imagery. Now, the camera is very good at figuring that out itself. So I usually have this on auto, but I would change it if I needed something specific. Like if I was a wedding and I was working, like in a church with the lights a bit funny and the currents having a difficult time trying to figure out. But white balance is another thing you might come across, but have that on auto to save yourself any kind of hassle or trouble. So finally, in this lesson, I want to quickly talk about raw and J pic. Now, these air file types that collects information when you shoot your picture. So basically, if you're shooting in broad, you're gonna be able to collect a higher amount of information to able to use it afterwards . So, for instance, I have always used raw because I love editing my images afterwards. I love changing the highlights, the colors, the tones, the curves that temperature and are able to do that by shooting in raw. I wouldn't be able to do that if I was shooting in J. Peg and I've always shot in raw because when I'm working with brands, they typically want high resolution images for their websites for their commercial work or their install. Poso shooting and raw allows me to do this, but basically you need to figure out what you're shooting for. The downside of shooting and raw is that you need bigger memory card, so you need a bigger on a quicker memory card because you obviously collect in more data. You be able to show you in J pic with a smaller SD card that usually finds in smaller digital cameras. So that is it for this lesson on picking up your first there's our camera for the very first time now. Obviously there is so many more sessions to explore, but hopefully just giving you the basic knowledge of these settings will help you feel more confident in picking up the camera and taking some images
6. Arranging your Feed: Hi, guys. Welcome back to the course. In today's letter, we are gonna be talking about how to arrange your instagram feed cohesively so it looks visually inspiring. Now it's 2020. Does arranging your feet cohesively still matter? Remember four, possibly three years. But all the content creators were making this show their feet looks competive and was visually inspiring. So does it still matter? On the short answer is yes, I'm probably more than ever right now, especially if you are a brand or business. Before we talk about that in more detail, I just want to say that it's very important to say that what might work best for me might not work best for you. So it's really important that you have your own style and you develop it and the stick of it. Another thing is that you have fun with arranging your feet. This doesn't need to be a chore if you give yourself really strict guidelines, strict rules and you just gonna fall out of love with that app and you gonna fall out of love with content creation to still have fun of it. But like I said before, it is so important if you are brand or business, because this is basically how you're gonna get engagement onto your page. You want to treat your instagram as if it's a shop window, so you can have a matter of seconds before someone looks at your window negative side straight away, whether they want to go in or they want to go out. This basically means Are you going to make sure people stay on your instagram page and engage with you? So it's really important to think about the 1st 9 pictures on your grid, and this is key to making sure someone stays on your page. The 1st 9 images need to be visually curated. They need to be visually inspiring. They need to be on point to make sure someone stays on your instagram. So basically, in today's lesson, we're gonna be talking about how to do that. How to arrange your feed on some of the things that I've come across when I'm arranging my feet so hopefully that will help you when you're doing it for yourself. So let's do that right now. But before we start to talk about actually how to arrange your feed with what colors to shoot, what content supposed to how to make it cohesive. I just want to quickly talk about the word off the year and you've probably heard it yourself, meaning many times the word off 2020 is niche on Before we heard it yourself, you're only gonna grow your instagram channels and other social media channels if you are being niche now, it's different to five years ago when you could post any kinds of content and you could really get great engagement. Now you really need to have a niche. You need to stay with the same subject, and you don't need to deviate from that. I've had so much trouble over the recent years with my own INSTAGRAM account because I literally love to shoot everything, and I love to share my work. I like to shoot landscapes, interiors, street style fashion pictures of my family, and basically what that does is it really confuses someone that's clicking on my INSTAGRAM account. They don't know what they're gonna get out from May, and I don't know what I'm gonna be offering them, so it's really, really confusing. And if you notice that Instagram accounts that have been growing really big in recent years . They are being the ones that been niche. So we have a House Channel, which just shows pictures off house renovation, D I Y. Hacks, that kind of thing. And they're count has grown enormously just from being nation. So it's really important that you think about that with your your brand that you want to go with now finding your own style. Finding your own needs can be a little bit difficult, especially if you just started. So I quickly want toe right down some tips for you on show you how you could find your style to help you get started with finding your nation, hopefully taking it on there and developing it. So if you just started and you don't know what your style is, but you need to start somewhere, just write things down. That's probably the best thing you can start. Then you can start to see what you like, what you don't like, and then you can start to just really group things together to start to focus on developing your own style. So what I recommend is just get in a whiteboard, write down some word to come. Use a laptop or however you want it just right style in the middle. And then you can spread offense. Different sections. The 1st 1 is goals. So this is basically where do you see yourself as a photographer? This might be a wedding photographer, portrait photographer or any kind of commercial work. So already have a nest. You can see where you want to go to in the future. Then write down your inspiration. Now, basically, this is key because this is what you're gonna focus on any of certain style. So just write down your favorite INSTAGRAM accounts on favorite photographers, then already starting to see which kind of work you want to go down which kind of route, then write down any keywords that you feel would represent your brand in the best possible way. So it might be, for instance, handmade craftsmanship, organic, these kind of things. Then try figure out, which kind of edits he like. So maybe you might be dark, moody, minimal all these kind of things. Then basically, at the end, just write down things that don't work. So these are the things that you don't want to be associated with. This might be colorful plastic food photography, black and white. Then, once you're groups all these together, it's really easy for you to focus on what style you want to develop in what excites you. What gets you interested in? You have all these key words that you can focus on, and you can eliminate all the stuff you don't be associate with. So when you're creating content, you can try and figure out this is good for my brand. And is this not working for my brand? That's a really easy way to try and focus on developing your style if you're a bit lost or uncertain where to stop. So the 1st 1 is when arranging a feed that you create a nice river flow with the content that you created within your niche. So what I mean by river and flies? Basically, if I am a fashion photographer, I'm not gonna post in a portrait portray full body detail portrait detail because already in my mind, that sounds really messy to me. You don't post in the same pictures next to each other. You basically want to spread your content out. So all flows nicely and looks visually appealing because if you're posting the same pictures next to each other, it's basically gonna look a little bit messy. It's gonna look mumble Jump board is gonna look like you haven't really fought about the content you post in. So really, keep that in mind. But now I'm gonna show you how I would plan out my content if, for instance, I was arranging my feet here very quickly and roughly have mapped out nine square boxes that would represent the instagram feed. And here I'm just plugging in post as if it was me having a picture taken off myself. Then I would add fillers in between isjust to space out all the content. Nothing is next to each other, and it's based out nicely. So what is a filler? Basically, a filler photo can be defined as images that help space out the more important photos on your feet. In other words, these type of photos help your entire feed achieve balance and provide a smooth transition from one photo to the next. So in this case it is a location, but it can also be many other things as well. This is an example off some detail shots, and here's an example off a flat lay all our very good fillers. Now I'm using the example as if I am a fashion photographer and I need to arrange my feet so the red one represents a portrait. The blue one represents a philosophy. This might be a location or some kind of detail outfit. Post on the black one is a full outfit. So basically now, as you can see, I'm just keeping all the posts apart from each other. Nothing is being posted next to each other on I'm using fillers to make sure everything is based out on its not too busy. So now you've done that basically want to jump into the plan only app because basically, this is the app that we used to arrange our feeds. There is a lesson on this in the apse. We use lessons to check that out. If you want to use personally, I would really highly recommend using app where you can just plan and arrange your feet like tiles. It's really simple and easy to use, but anyway, I'm gonna chuck all my fashion images in here as an example, and I'm gonna show you how messy it could look if you keep posting the same pictures next to each other. So let's do that. At the moment, we've got all the portrait's together and then a bit of detail on a bit of a full body as well. It just looks really messy. It's not very visually appealing and just looks like you haven't really fought about how you want your brand to look. Now, basically, we're gonna split Portrait up now, just by moving fillers in between. The portrait now filler is basically a detail short. It could be a landscape. It's just making sure that your feed is broken up when we talk about Phyllis in more detail later on. Now, basically, once that's done, then we can move the four bodies in now. As you can see, it's already creating this really nice flow. It's really important that next picture now is not posted the same, so you want to kind of do the opposite. So for May are the portrait do a filler, but the full body. Then I would probably go to fill again, then to a full body and then to portray so that shows that there's a really nice river. It's organized, It looks really visually appealing. It's not looking busy and it's not looking messy. So really think about that. When you're arranging your feet, you don't be posting. The same image is next to each other, and that's really, really important. So keeping on the same subject off not posting the same picture. Basically, this also means not posting the same outfits next reach over and also the same locations. Basically, you want makes your content up even with outfits. So if I am a fraction influencer, if I'm posting an outfit, the next picture is not going to be off the same outfit. You basically want to mix it up and you want to organize it just so it's a little bit mixed up in your feet because if your post in the same outfit next to each other, then the engagement's gonna be really low, because I've already seen it that already felt like they just seen it previously, so that engagement is gonna be really low. But if you post it maybe in the next six posts, then it's just gonna refresh. Their mind is going to keep them interacted a little bit more. So always think about that when you're posting your images. So one way we could prevent this from happening is making sure we shoot bohg content. So if you are a travel photographer, you go to one location shoot fighter 16 which is there. You go to another location, you shoot 5 to 6 images there and so on. If you are a fraction influencer, you shoot 5 to 6 images of this outfit on 5 to 6 images off that outfit. Once we've got enough bulk content, then were able to arrange feed much better. You're not gonna get into the habit of posting the same pictures next to each other, so that is really important. Go a few days about posting. Don't chase content because it as we know it could be really stressful. Just focus on boat content, then, once you've got really mass amount of images, then that's going to make it really easy for you. So one of the things we haven't talked about yet and it's probably the most important thing with arranging your feet in that is color on mood. This is key to making sure that your content has a really nice river flow, and it just feels the same. Everything is universal. So what I would really recommend on this is what I've done in the beginning is to go into light room and create your very own preset. Now, this is gonna be dependent on the style. It's gonna be dependent on what you're promoting or just kind of what fee and mood you want to give to your audience. But going to lot room created preset. Put it on a low, your images you can create to to free image presets. But then just keep in mind that it might start to get a little bit tricky and it might start to look a little bit busy. So what I do with my feet is I have a one preset that I use constantly. So if you scroll him for my feet, everything is gonna feel coherent. It's gonna feel universal. The audience is not is gonna know what they're going to get when you click on my instagram . It's warmer tones on you know, your preset might change every month. It might change every week, even, but just making sure that the first. A lot of images are really coherent, and it shows that you're working and you're thinking about how how to arrange your feet. That's the most important thing with Caroline's Instagram, it's more monochrome. It's more whites and blacks. So basically, that's how she does her instagram, and she's been using the same preset the whole time. So basically, as someone is clicking on someone's instagram, I know what I'm getting immediately. So you've created your preset. Everything's feeling really co creative. Everything is flowing nicely in everything is organized. But now you're gonna start to run into some problems, and that's to do with the colors you are picking for your instagram Now. I've run into many, many problems throughout the years of content creation, simply because I haven't been able to post a picture because it doesn't match my feed. Now that sounds crazy. It sounds ridiculous, and it's a little bit O C. D. But I'm really particular on which colors are used on my instagram. That's not saying you have to think the same way. Everyone has a different style, and everyone posts what they want a post. But for May, I want everything to feel really creative. So there's been times where I've been to the beach, for instance, on I want to create some images, but I haven't been out to use that imagery because everything is to blue. If you look for my instagram feed, you'll see no blue. What so ever So on these days, I know I'm not gonna be up to get any content, but a way to get around this is basically to use the carousel. When you're posting a picture post more than one image. The first image should always match your feed within the images afterwards could be the ones that you really like, But just don't match your feet so you can pop them in there so everyone's able to see the images that you've created. That's a really great way to get around this. But like I said before, you don't have to be like me. I'm a little bit O. C. D. With my feet and how everything looks so there is another way we can get around this off, not wasting our content Now when you use an example off kosher core. He's one of my favorite photographers and basically He's a travel photographer, so he's going to warm climates and colder climates, and he's not gonna waste any off his content like me. So basically what he does is he does bulk posted off different colors. So he will move from a warm, reddish tone on go into deeper, cooler blues. And then he might even post a green bulk posting as well. So basically, this is how he posts his content without having any of that wasted material. So that is it for this lesson on arranging your food? I really hope you enjoyed the lesson on the most important thing from this letter is that you just have from of it. Like I said before, Don't give yourself strict guidelines like I give myself because sometimes you have lots of waste material, and sometimes it's not so fun when you're not able to use your content, always make sure that you're focusing on having something that's really visually appealing and attractive for someone to come onto your instagram and stay there and engage with you. So I really hope you enjoy the letter on. We'll see you
7. Useful Apps to help you Create Content: Hi, guys. Welcome back to the course in today's lesson, we're gonna be exploring all the apse we used to help us create content to edit and supposed on social media. We're gonna go through them all individually, so you understand the benefits of using these APS. But most importantly, you know how to use up If you're going to download it today to start creating your content yourself Now, after use to help us create content, they make it easier for us to create content on the go. They contain your content to the next level. But most importantly, for May help me save so much time, and that's why we use them on a daily basis. Now, this video is gonna be split up into three sections to create in the editing on the post in . So let's jump in it straight away and show you our favorite APS. We used to help us create content. So before we get started, I just wanted to quickly show you this contents page. If you've used any of the apse before and I know some of you have, then you can just skip forward to the timeline to see which app pursuits you on which app you want to learn about. Hopefully that will help you guys in navigate in this lesson easier. The first up, we're going to really connect his spark camera. Now this is a very popular app for capture and video footage on the go. It's our most used app and is very popular amongst other influences on social media. It's easy to use easy to edit on, since last year has been free to download. So this is gonna be the screen. When you first open that up, you're gonna see a big red circle in the middle, and this is gonna be your record button and it's up right. You're going to see a plus unless it's basically really good. If you want to import any videos you already have stored on your phone to click that and this brings up all the videos you have on your phone so you can just click on them on import them really, really simple and easy to use. But we're gonna click off that. I'm just going to start recording a video ourself click on the red button in the middle. This would come to this screen on all you need to do to record a video is push your finger down on the screen and it will start recording your clip. You take your finger off and the clip was stopped recording Really simple and easy to use. Push it down. It's recording. Take off it stopped recording the top right. You have a selfie button, and in the bottom you have a play button, which is basically place or your clips backwards. You the bottom left. You can also write some text as well. Let's quick of that. And here you can see all of the videos that you've created. I don't think that app actually deletes them unless you delete them yourself. As you can see, I've made lots of different videos, but we're going to click on one now that I made yesterday just to show you how to edit the individual clips. Let's click on this video and this is a family day yesterday when we're paying in the wall , and here's a few icons at the bottom that I want to show you. The 1st 1 is the scissors. Now, this is basically where you gonna trim and clip or your pieces together to click on that, and you gonna see all your clips at the bottom here. You could just keep your finger on them and you can basically change and reorder all the clips. As you wish. Really simple and really easy to use. Click on a clip and you can change the length of the clip. Trim it down just by moving the little circles. You could make it longer or shorter, depending on what you want, and you have a volume bottom at the top in the bottom, right. You have a speed button so you can speed the footage up. You can slow it down depending on what you want. If you're not delete, the clip we D to do is find a clip that you want to delete. Keep your finger on it and you can move it to the trash bin that's on the top to just move it, click it to the trash. But be very careful because if you delete it, there's no way of getting the clip back. So it just cancer that the next few icons are basically to do with the volume. You can click on this one and you can change the volume off clip, the voiceover or the music that you may have had it on the video. This button here, Mr to do voiceover. But we're not going to do that now. On this button here is to add any music that you want to the video. Edit your video. All you need to do is swipe left and right. You have so many different options, so many different filters, so it's really easy to edit your video. Once you don't, you can click on the top right icon, which would download your video. The best thing about this app is that you bring up a screen that you can transfer it straight into your instagram, and you have an option of splitting up the video into 15 2nd clips to able to use it for your stories. Split for story, or you could just save it in. One big file on open instagram eight millimeter vintage camera captures the beauty and magic off old school vintage movies right through your viewfinder. Dust and scratches, retro colors, flickering light leaks, even frame shakes. All can be instantly added with a single tap of the finger and we often use it for a very special projects when we need to film. This is the eight millimeter up when you open it up on your screen, and there's only really free buttons you need to think about when using this app. It's really easy and simple to use. As you can see, seventies is written in gold, and that is your filter button. You compresses and change the look of your video on the different filters you can use. There's around six or seven filters that you can pick from, so you have a wide range of options to pick from this one we're just gonna use on here and can go ahead and push this button up the top here, which basically just flips around the camera and you're gonna see me pop up in a moment. So as you can see, it's a really vintage, grainy feel into the video on. We can push this red button to start recording the video on this records straight away. This button down here is basically going to add a glitch effect to see your video so you can just push your finger on that and it moves it. It shakes it a little bit to give that really vintage feeling unfold is a talk it for storytellers. You can create beautiful stories with templates. You can create your story of 200 plus templates from collections like film frames and ripped paper. It is our most used app for instagram stories because it gives a professional feeling The APP is free to download, but you may have to pay extra for different templates, but you can pay for a monthly subscription as well. When he opened the unfold up, yours may look a little different because I've already started to create lots of different templates from my instagram stories so yours might look a little bear. But to start to create your own template, all you do is click on the plus at the bottom, and here it would bring you to a story title menu so you can just name your story. So it's easy to locate. We're gonna call this one New York on here. We can start to create our own story. This grain will basically bring up all your templates if you click on this button. And as you can see, there's lots of different templates. You can use classic Siri's journal Digital Wave Stay home. Lots of different examples you can use as an example would start to use the ripped paper template, so we're just starting to import material and images. Now click on an image and selected on import. This will bring up a very nice effect, and you can slowly start to build your story by clicking on the black button at the bottom . This would just bring up more templates for you to use to build on and start creating a very own unique story. Once he finished, you can just swipe left and right to see what it's gonna look like. And you can also click on this little eye icon at the bottom here, which is to show you in more detail when you take that off and on the bottom right. You can see this and more options. You can add text. You can add a little icons like plaster and tape and lots of different stickers. We can change the color of the background to bend in on what you want, and we can also deplete the image as well, so we can just click off that and we can start to download. Here you have the option off saving as a individual page or at a story. So you just want to click on story. So you're able to get all the individual templates and not just the one. So here you just click on the story and you can click it to safety device. Click it and safe and you're done. Now, we're just in instagram stories, and I'm gonna show you how to upload them. You just click on the left bottom here, you're going to see all the images that you've saved, and you can just add them to your stories there. Adobe Photoshopped like room is a powerful yet intuitive photo editor. Light room empowers you to correct Beautiful photos will help when you become a better photographer. It's ideal to use when travelling and you're not able to get to your desktop. You may need basic knowledge in adobe is free to use, but you can unlock a premium service with a subscription. This is the first thing you're gonna see when you open the light room, My bow up. And as you can see, it's a little bit more advanced to other APS, and I would only recommend it if you're used to using light room anyway. But the bottom you can see a camera button and an ad button. The camera is obviously just going to take a picture so you can start editing it. But the button on the left is add, and he can start at your images from your camera roll. We can click on an image, and we can start at its in it straight away. The first thing you see is all the icons at the bottom, and there's so many different options you can pick from. I'm not going to go through all of them. There's so many things like hell in crop like color affects detail, so it's a little bit more advanced compared to a normal app. But here we can just start to go in and start our image. Here's the basic one that you're used to on light room so you have your highlights. Shadows. Whites and blacks even had your tone curve so a little bit more advanced. So I'm not gonna go through every single thing in the light room mobile app. So like I said I would only really use this app if I was on the go traveling. And I didn't have my Mac book with me to edit a picture professionally, but I still wanted that look as quickly as possible here. We're just going to export it to Kummerow. The pain Early app is used to plan, edit and schedule your social media content now, so you don't have to do it later. All the instagram and Pinterest visual planning and management tools you need in one easy to use tool. It's great because he gets a plan schedule. Manage all your social media content. The APP is easy to use and save a lot of time. There's many different plans of subscriptions dependent on what you need. So let's open the pain only up. And this is gonna be the first screen that you see. As you can see, it's very easy. You can't miss it. You see a plus button at the bottom. Now, this is where you're gonna add your media to start planning. This green is basically what your instagram looks like now, and we want to import the images so we can move around the tiles to see what the future is gonna look like. So basically, all you need to do is click on the plus button at the bottom. We're gonna start at in our media now to start planning. So let's upload our images. Click on the plus click on the albums. I already made an album yesterday of Constant that I was gonna insert. Here you take the buttons, and as you can see, there's no quick way of important them. And I think there's a maximum of 10 posts that you can upload in one. Go add. And here you have your posts. You can upload as a carousel or upload is 10 posts which were going to do. We've imported all our images on the thing you need to know here is that you see you on every single image in the top left inside. This stands for unscheduled, so we haven't scheduled any posts yet, But then we start moving around the images like tiles so we can arrange our feed. This is this isn't the correct way, by the way. It's just to give you an example. We will be bringing you a individual course on arranging a feed to. Don't worry about that too much right now, but we can just arrange them, move them around to see what we like to see what we don't like. We can click on an image. Basically. Here you can start to schedule your post. You can click on it, right? A caption. And we can just write New York here that will write your caption for you Return. Okay. The next year, see free icons underneath your image. You can click on the 1st 1 which is crop. This is just crop your image dependent on what you want. Close that the other ones aren't really important. This one here is scheduled. And this is where we're going to schedule up post so you can pick a time a date, and it will post the image that you've created with the capture in the hashtags. Exactly how you want and it were posted for you. So a lot of time saving with this app. With this app, I tend to usually just use it once a week. So on a Sunday, or sit down plan on my content, right? Or the captions, and schedule all the posts so the next 23 weeks. I don't really need to worry about posting. I just need to worry about content creation, so it saves me a lot of time in that regards. The motor app is used to create stunning video stories. You can choose animated templates at your media text and customize its you're like in. Then you can share it to any platform you can choose from 100 plus templates from many different styles, all of which you can edit yourself. It's free to use in the beginning, but then there is a 9 99 per month for extra features. So mojo app is very similar to the unfold up that we saw earlier. You're basically gonna open the screen and you're gonna see this page here. This is gonna be all your templates. As you can see, it's just creating templates to add to your stories, but it's more interactive. It's more moving. It's a little bit more interesting. Click on the middle button. This is my stories that have created through the past year or so. So Scotland went in, and I've done this campaign with Jimmy. True, this is just a template that I picked from the first page haven't really changed anything apart from the text. So you can basically just click on the picture. We can remove it and we can add our own picture as well. So we're just gonna take the picture off now we're gonna add our very own picture. As you can see, very simple. A nights moving is a little bit more interesting, and we can save that and come out. Have a little text button down here. You're gonna just edit the text, changed the front and you can sign it once it saved. You can see the stories that you've created, and you can upload it straight to Instagram. So that is it for me today. And I really hope that I've given you enough knowledge in these APS for you to go out there , download them and start using them to create your content. Now, every single app is probably not gonna be beneficial to you. But the good thing is, there's hundreds and thousands of apps out there for you to use so many absolutely to use to create your content. A lot of the apse that I've discovered throughout the years I've probably been for photographers, other content creators, friends, family members. So what I'd really love from you guys is just to let me know if there's anything that admitted that would be really beneficial to May, or if there's anything that you found really useful over the years, I'd really love to hear your forts on which absolute use. So I really hope you enjoyed the lesson, guys, and I'll see you on the next one.
8. Case Study Flat Lay: Hi, guys. Welcome to this case study. In today's lesson, we are gonna be learning everything you need to know how to shoot a flat lake, basically flatly is where you taken image from above, down below and everything below is organized, placed in a very nice way. So basically flat Nasar used for magazines are used for banners and headers they used for from nails. But they're also used for creating a brake in your instagram feed, which we talked about in another lesson. So basically, today we've been given a brief from a client of ours that we've been working with for many years. It's Talisker Whisky Brand based in Scotland. Basically, they've given us a brief where we need to create a really, visually appealing flatly. This is to go with their thing. They're launching where they've made a recipe that goes really well with a hot chocolate. So we've been given the brief today to shoot flatly, and today's lesson we're basically gonna show you how to set it up, what things to look for and just how to shoot it. That's what we'll be doing in today's lesson. So when you get a brief from the client. The very first thing is the plan it out. You can't just make it up as you go along because it's a brief. You really need to stick to the brief. So when you're making your flat, lay really figure out what the brand wants, what the brain is looking for, just trying to make a story that goes well with the brand. So basically, with this telescope flatly that we're gonna do in a moment, we're basically thinking of all the ideas that go with telescope. Basically, when I think of telescope, I think off the Isle of Skye it's really rugged, were out in the nature. So you really want to create flatly that goes with that, basically gonna show you later on. But we're using a really nice wooden table that gives it a really rustic, really outdoors kind of fire. So when you get a brief from the client, that is the first thing that you need to think about. Does it go well with the brand? But if you're just making a friendly for yourself, then you have the whole creative freedom that you could possibly wish war. You can just go ahead and be really creative on. However, you want to create your flatly. But the first thing went great. New flatly, apart from making a plan is to make sure that you're using natural light. Now, this is really, really important because if you use and flash studio, then you're gonna get some really weird shadows. It's just not gonna look very similar studio like, which is great for if you don't product shots. But if you want to create a really natural flatly that there was a really nice story, you really want to look for that natural life. So basically, where this is going to set flat lace up today, where it's close to the window. It's a really bright, sunny day, but we're gonna make sure that is feeling really natural with the light. So that's what you really need to think about. The first few things when you create in your flatly. Secondly, and probably just as important is making sure that you picked the right backdrop, the right texture off your flatly. So basically you can choose absolutely everything. There's so many different textures that you could use. You could use work. You could use sand you could use marble. Basically, you need to pick the right texture for your flatly. So upstairs we shot this image here, which basically is just the bed sheets. So this gives a really nice morning fresh kind of vibe on. We also shot this, which is basically a explorer type flat lay, and we basically just used a map and placed everything on top. So, as you can see, you really need to pick the right backdrop for your image. And this is gonna be key to making sure you have the right feet in for your image. You want to match up to perfection because this is this is what's gonna make your front leg just come alive and tell a story. But also most important is picking the right color. So last week we got a brief from the client where we had to shoot a really feminine fragrance for Caroline to. Basically, we ordered loads of pink card and we shot the image shot down just every place on the pink image. If you go onto any kind of photography website, you can order a lot different kinds of cars backdrops in different textures. So you can use absolutely any kind of color that you want this so many to choose from. But just go on, order Cem cards in different colors. And basically, we have a big pile of different card that we use for different clients when we get brief, so always be prepared. When you get brief, make sure you have the right colors as well. You can use absolutely everything. So what equipment do you need to create your flatly? Now, the first thing you might think off is using a truck would because this is what's gonna help stable your image. And you're not gonna have any of that motion blur with shaky arms that when you're shooting , basically there is many problems with shooting on a tripod on one of them. Is that if you she flat down with its report, you're gonna get lots of legs in the picture. Whether the tripod is standing up now, you might be using a different kind of trump card, but all the trap onset of use previously, this does not work. So basically the best way is to shoot flatly is just to go free hand and just try and keep the camera as stable as possible, but you could test it out for yourself and decide whether you want to use a tripod or just use your hands. The next thing you need to think about is which kind of lends you are using. Now I would recommend using a 50 millimeters for flat late if you go any thing wider than that, and then you're gonna have some really distorted lines using a 50 millimeters is gonna be the perfect spoke a limp for shooting flat lays. But it's really important. Whichever lends you are using, you always double it for the shutter speed. So if I'm using a 50 millimeters lens, then I'm going to double that. To make sure that is the shutter speed is 100 of a second. This is going to stop any kind of motion blur any kind of shaky footage when you're true in your picture. So whatever lens you're using, just double it, and this is going to make sure that your image is gonna be stable. Next, you gonna think about the F stop number. Basically, you want to be sure all your flat lays around F 0.56 If you got anything lower than that, then you're gonna have blurry pictures, that blurry things that you shoot in. The only thing that's gonna be a focus is going to be the middle prop that you are using. So stay around 5.6. If you have friends in your picture that are different heights so you won't have something that's really low and something that's really high, then you might want to take that f stop number even higher because you want everything to be focused on. Different heights might distort that a little bit. So always think about which f stop, but you are gonna be using. Now we're briefly just talked about which kind of like you want to be using everything you wanna be using is natural. Now, this is really important. You can also use a flash, and you can also use studio light in. But just be aware off the shadows in your products and also be aware that it's not looking like a product studio shop with flat layers. They really want to feel really natural. And I want to really tell a great story. So shoot in natural light is gonna be the best thing for you now. You can also use blackest before lots of different backdrops. That's a different textures card, whatever you want to use. So you want to really have a backup list off all the props that you've got. We electric have a prop box downstairs where we have all these different kind of props. Now we just go to markets. We go Teoh and stores. And wherever we go, we just pick up little props that we think could be useful in creating a flat lay not just now, but just in the future as well. So anything quirky, anything that could tell a story, just pick it up and put it in a prop box. So when I think of a flatly, I think of free, different types and I'm talking about the 1st 2 in detail now and then, the 1st 1 is basically going to be me fulfill in the brief for telescope. So what are these freely, different times? The 1st 1 is the classic overly now. This is typically used with camera guys, tech guys who empty the camera bags and have everything organized in a very visually appealing way. But also brands uses as well for their banners, headers from now. So everything looks really clean and organized with a classic overlay. Everything is placed to perfection. Everything is lined up on the space in between. Every single product is the same if you're gonna have something wonky is gonna get really out of place. So this is the first over late that I think what when I'm creating a flat. So the next one is basically the organized mess. Now this might be just you empty in a bag making, making it look like you just entered your back in a really messy way. But everything that's in the picture has still been placed. It's still organized, but it's just done in a really messy kind of way. It doesn't really need to be focused on everything being straight and everything in line, but you still need to think about placing your items in a very nice way. So when organizing your flat late doesn't matter what kind of flat layer is, you're basically gonna be moving every single prop 100 times. He's gonna be spending so much time organizing all your flat late, and that's absolutely fine flat lace aren't created in one minute. So basically, when you put prop down, the likelihood is that you're gonna move it seconds later, I'm gonna make sure that everything is correct. Everything is placed. How you want it to be. Because the last thing that you want is when you shot the image and you've moved the flat late, you have to set it up a little over again. So just make sure move things around until you're happy. That's really important. One created your flat, flat late. And this is where I spend most of my time. And this is the one where all content creative spend most of their time and that it's with this story tellin flatly, basically, we're gonna do a storytelling flatly now with the brief for telescope. But basically, this is the one that really just tells a story with the image. This is where everything has been set up to perfection. You're using props. Everything just matches the brand perfectly. You're really organizing your flat lays now to tell a really engage in picture that's is gonna be yeah, inspiring to other people who is looking at your work. So we're gonna jump in. Now I'm gonna show you how we create our storytelling friendly to match with telescope. And this blood labor decides, uses wooden table. This table gives a great texture, but it's also important to create even more texture. This makes the image interest in but also gives more feeling. In this case, we used a kitchen cloth next to want to bring in the actual products itself. This needs to be placed in the centre or just off centre because this will be the focal point of your image. Were placed on top of the cloth so that brown whiskey doesn't get lost with a brown table. Now we just add in our props. Another key item is the actual drink itself. So this also needs to be a focal point, a place fairly close to the center. Now we can start building around it using the props of different sizes. These props need to be spread out and not placed next to each other. Everything needs to be imbalance. Add props that add a story. If we used a spoon to measure the hot chocolate, then we're gonna use that if we use the spoon to stir the hot chocolate, then we're going to use that. No, we're focusing on the details. In this case, I'm cutting the marshmallows. Placing them in the bowl. Focusing on the details is what really makes this image interest in without it may look a little flat. We are also using the marshmallows to fill any other existent gaps in our flatly once everything has been placed and you are happy now you can start at the chocolate and start to make a little bit more off a mess with storytelling, adding any kind of Sprinkles Trayvon's splashes really as to the texture of the whole image and helped build up the layers again without it may look a little flat. So it's important to point out that you don't have to be to tidy in this part of the process when you think you're finished, just do one more final check and make small adjustments just to make sure you are completely happy with everything here. I'm just had in Sprinkles to make it more interest in. Then I feel in the cup up of water, given its stare and add in the marsh mellows, and now we are ready to shoot. So as I'm sure you know, I'm just getting high up above it. I'm not using a tripod, so I'm just standing on a chair and I'm shooting it straight down. So it's very important to point out that you can shoot 100 images until you're happy with the right one. And here is the final image. The main thing you need to take away from this letter is to make sure that when you're creating your flat lays on it has some kind of story telling that is so important. Pick up props used different props. Tell a story with your flat ladies. That's probably the most important thing, because if you just shooting a picture, it's not going to get much engagement. No, really. Notice the story behind the image, so you really need to use props to tell a story. Think about textures. Think about colors. Think about all these different kind of things that help build a story with your flatly. So I really hope you enjoyed the lesson, guys, we'll see you on the next one
9. How to Work with Brands: Hi, guys. Welcome back to the course in today's letter, we're gonna be talking about how to work with brands. This is really, really simple. It doesn't need to be over complicated. That's only two factors that you really need to focus on. But before we talk about this, I just want to say that this course has been focused on content creation, how to use a camera, basic camera settings. And eventually there's gonna be a time where you want to start to think about creating concept for brands and just working with brands on collaborations. This might be with ads, pay partnerships and sponsorships. However it might be they will become a time where your crane really nice content and you're starting to think about how you could may be monetized this before we talk about these two key factors I want to mention, I just want quickly say about my story and my background of working with brands. So we started creating content around six years ago when we got our first brand collaboration very early on, completely different to what it is now. It was working in a completely different way, but it was still a first brand collaboration. We were working with brands on enough for, say, two years, and then eventually it got to a point where I had to decide whether I was going to stick with my full time job or pursue this dream off mine. So I had to make a decision because I started to work with a lot more brands. I didn't have the time. Teoh do both. I really, really loved crane content. I really loved building relationships with brands. I just really loved being creative. So I decided to go pursue my dream and quit my full time job. This wartime drop with something that I built up for 10 years. It was my dream job. I only just got it actually, and I was so happy when I got it. But then I just had to make a decision. It was a really tough decision, but it was the right decision ever since that they had been working with brands full time on were able Teoh work of all different kind of brands and be creative and just yeah, be in. It's really creative bubble that I just absolutely love. So hopefully six years of my knowledge with working with brands will hopefully give you an insight. Teoh work of a brand how to approach a brand on the best way to work on a collaboration. So let's talk about two things really. Focus on when wanting to work with a brand so completely wants to scrap the title off. The lesson on how to up of brands and how to get paid. Don't ask yourself these questions completely scrapped these on what our really focus on is one thing, and that is how I can provide a value. This is the main thing with any kind of brand collaboration. This is literally everything. By providing a value to the brand, they are going to be one into collaborate with you. If you're not providing a value, then there's simply no point in them wanting to collaborate with you. It's really, really hard, but it's simple as that. That's certainly great photographers out there. So many gate content, greatest so many great influences. They could just choose someone else. So it's really, really important that you are focusing on providing a value for them. What can they get out of this collaboration now? There are two ways we can provide a value to a brand on the 1st 1 is building a audience now. This doesn't mean that you need to have a big following group, because throughout this course we've spoken about how important engagement rate is. But making sure that you're focusing on building your audience is going to be key by providing a great audience that is loyal to you that has a strong engagement. This is valuable to the brand because they could tap into a different market where they can tap into the other one is building a product. So what services are you given to the brand? A service that they are not gonna get themselves. So for May aren't providing imagery for their social media accounts for their websites for any kind of commercials. So that is my product. So you really need to think of what your product is really focused on improving that once you have your product, you really need to like I said, to focus on improving that, making sure it's the best possible product, which makes it easier to sell. Now if you have one of these or preferably both of these, this is how you're gonna work with brands. This is how brands are gonna notice you and they're going to start approaching you for brand collaborations. Now they're not gonna approach you all at once. It's gonna be is gonna is gonna happen over time. But that's also not to say that you can also contact the brand also, by having some kind of value where you email the brand, concept them, then it's just gonna be easier process for you to start to build this relationship with them. So having a bigger audience having a product to sell them is basically how this is going to happen. So you've built up a great audience. You have value that you can offer the brand. You've produced a really great product that you're working on on improving on. Now it's time to contact the brand if they're not contacting you. And the first thing that you need to do is find an email. This is gonna be the first thing that you do when you're working with a brand. This email is very important that you don't do it through Instagram Direct Messenger or Facebook Messenger. You need to contact them through email It's the most professional way, and this is how the easy way you can start a dialogue with the brand. To find this email, you basically need to look for a PR email. This might be on a website. It might even be on the instagram buyer. When you write that email is so important that you are professional and you sound like you've got your knowledge together and you know how to work with brands and you've been doing it for a long time. It's very important that you stay professional. Say hi, what your name is, where you from and what kind of content you're producing. Then you can say which kind of idea you had in mind. So let's say you are one into contact. Victory knocks. They have this really cool knife that you want to shoot, and it fits in with a content trip that you've had planned in, say, Scotland. You're providing a service for them that's gonna be shooting a new knife in a really great location that they can use for their social media. That's just an example, so you can start to talk about your ideas that you're having with this product and basically, what services you can give them and how much valuable that is gonna be for them to work with you, once you have done that, is also very important that when you're writing an email that you include a media pack, a media pack is almost like a CV. And I'm gonna show you my one from a couple of years ago in a moment and just talk through it. But basically, immediate pack is almost like a C V. And you want to treat this like you're applying for a job. It's very, very similar. So send a really professional email talk about who you are, what kind of content you are creating, which services you are gonna provide for their Any ideas that you have for the collaboration. Andi. Yeah, send them your media pack. That is the first way you're gonna work with the brand. Here is my media pack from around three years ago. The very first thing you want to do is make sure you put your name on the name of your business, include a picture so they can see what you look like. Them, right? A about me section, then You can also include your instagram handle or your website just so they can see your work. Then you want to write a little bit of the work that you do on how you edit and then some more information about your demographics, where your audience is from. And then you can start to talk about which kind of insights you have for your instagram, so impressions you'll reach on your profile fuse per day. Then you can include how many followers you have on your social media channels. Really simple, really easy, very CV like now when they write back Teoh, they're ever going to say that interested in the proposal or they might tailor it differently. It's very, very important, and I cannot stress this enough that you really need to value yourself. You have spent years building up your audience. You have spent years building your product. You are valuable. It doesn't matter If you have 5000 followers or free 100,000 followers, you need to value yourself. Now. A lot of the times there are some brands out there that just simply take advantage off influences, and they just yet there's some brands out there that just really don't know how to work in a professional way. Sounds sorry to bring the tone down, but it's actually really, really true. In the beginning, when I was creating content, I just by having a post on their social media accounts was really like Wow for May. I got a free jacket and I was really, really happy. And in the beginning I was just doing everything for free. I was given them all my value, all my services, and I wasn't really getting anything in return. No money, just a product on This is really, really important that you put a price on your name because you are valuable. It's really, really important for me to say that. So if a brand contact you and say we can't do it for this but we can give you some free products. No, do not do things for free on A lot of brands in this day and age will realize that if they are used to weapon with influences, they will know how important that is. One of the things that I would really recommend is making sure that you have a fixed price for your product, So that means if the brand concepts is you and say, I would like free instagram posts from you to be posted on your social media, if you have a an idea of how much you charge for one post, then you can send back how much you want to charge for free posts. It might be a little bit cheaper because you're having free post and you wanna do some kind of deal. But basically making sure that you have a fixed price is gonna be easier for you to negotiate. If a brand contacts you and says we want to give you this much money on its way off your fixed, priced, then simply do not do it. It's really important again. And I can't stress this enough that you value yourself. If they take you seriously and they want to use your services, they will meet your fixed price on. That's very important that you stick to it. So I've watched many videos for all the years I've worked many, many brands and many different influences. But one thing that tends to get missed and people don't often think about is how important networking is. Now this isn't just for email. This is actually in person on word of mouth. And just been a night person goes a very long way. So let's say, for instance, you've gone on a press trip. Be professional, be nice, do your work properly. Just be really, really professional and just make a lasting impression with the brand because it goes such a long way. And the majority of my brand collaborations that just just come from meeting someone in person just being really professional nice. Years ago, I accidentally found myself on a trip with Remy Martin. I wasn't really supposed to be there. It was like a day before the trip and someone offered me. Someone pulled out and they said, Can you come on this trip on that trip? I was really professional, worked really hard. I made a lasting impression with that brand on ever. They have a campaign now has been four years. They include me on every single campaign because I I was just really nice to them. I gave them a value on I was just in general just really, really nice. The relationship we have it's so nice together, building a relationship using communication is so important. Network in where the mouth Is everything. So let's do another example. It was last year I went Teoh wedding on. I was just really interacted with people. I was nice. Those kind does consider it. I was just being involved with everyone on just network in being like a social butterfly on Basically a year later, four people from that wedding actually booked me because they remembered me from that wedding. It's really also important that you're working well with colleagues in your industry as well. So other influences over photographers, other social media content creators You also nice to them as well. Because last week I got a job for Canon is like my dream job. And I got this job because someone recommended me. This guy that recommended May. I recommended him for a job a couple of months before where a brand context means to do something for them. But I wasn't really matching. I wasn't able to give them what they wanted. So I said to them, This is the guy for you. You should contact him. He is absolutely perfect Now he remembered me from that on. He gave me this job with cannon. So as you can see, it's really important that we're focusing on relationships in the industry. So you have your first brand collaboration on. We spoke about being professional on how important communication is when you're on social network in, but it's also really porter that your focus in on your communication and your professionalism during the collaboration as well. This is your solo business. It's really hard to remember that sometimes when you're working for yourself, but basically this is your business, anyone to treat it like one. Also during that collaboration, you just want to be really, really honest. If there's something that you don't think is gonna work for your audience or there's something that is just not gonna work in terms of your content creation, then just be really honest. It's really important that you have a back and forth dialogue where you're honest with each other. You build in ideas together. It's not just the brand saying you need to do this. You basically need to have a really great relationship where of your brand, where you can share your ideas to make sure the content that you're producing is gonna be the best possible content for your audience, So having that really good communication with your brand that you're working with is so important. It's also important that after the collaboration has finished, you are sending insights to the brand. The brand should not ask for this. This is really important if you want to take yourself seriously. So once you've done a collaboration, get all your insights together. How many lights it got, how many saves, how many shares and just screenshot your insights with the post and send it in a an invoice when you finished working with the brand. This will help them, um, build a relationship with you in the future. They will see that your professional you taking this collaboration seriously and it just helps them build on the campaign for the future. This will see what's worked, what hasn't worked on how you can work again in the future going forward. So always include your insights with every single brand collaboration that you do after the collaboration has finished, this doesn't mean that the whole brand collaboration has ended. This is gonna make a lasting relationship. All my brands I worked with, I've been working with them for free or four years. So after the collaboration has ended, always stay in contact. Always be nice. Just dropped them an email once a year at Christmas I, West End or the brands A card is a Happy Christmas or Happy New Year, so you just really need to stay in contact of them. Bring them new ideas. If you think something could work for them than just stay in the loop with the brand, just build this really long term relationship with them. Don't just end brand collaboration really, really important. If you want to take things forward and build a big client base between my things, I just quickly want to talk about before we end. The lesson on that is a lot of photographers, a lot off influences. They join a agency now. Do you want to join agency? An agency will basically be there as your like manager and try to get you work. I tried being with the agency. Now this is very important. I say this is different for everyone. But when I was with an agency, I was actually getting more work by myself. Then, through the agency and What this meant is I had to give the agency cut off all the work I was getting. I was getting more work than them, so I was actually potentially losing out. Now, this isn't to say all agencies that bad, but this is something that you really need to think about. And when I am working for a brand, well, I need to contact influences to shoot some content for them. If a influencer has a agent, then the price goes up and the brand that I'm working for actually pulls out because the price is too much. So these are all things you really need to think about when choosing agency. If that's something that you want to do in the beginning, it might actually be a good thing for you because they are looking after their building, your new network and your relationships. But longer term, I don't think it's a good idea that was for me. Personally, I like to be control of my business and have the relationships myself on. Also, a lot of the time when I get a brief from the agency, it kind of gets lost. I prefer to work with a brand directly so we can share ideas together on nothing really gets missed, and we can produce the best possible content. But having an agency is something that you might need to think about. So the last one is, Do you want to switch to a business account on your instagram? There's been so much information about this in the past few years, a lot of influence is saying that that engagement has dropped, but I can see you. For me. It hasn't dropped one bit. What, Switching to a business account? Do you just make you look more professional and I'll make you look like this is your business and you taking this seriously? That's what Brown wants to see. So make sure that you switch to a business account. If you want to take this seriously and build a future in the industry, that is it for this letter on how to work with the brand is actually very simple. Like I said in the very beginning, if you're working on providing value for a brand, then naturally brands are gonna contact you on. Then you can start to contact brands as well. It's just gonna happen, really really Naturally, it's really important that you also remember that this isn't gonna just happen. All in one go only one knife. This is a thing that's been built up for many, many years. I've been doing this for six years on I'm still to this day building relationships with brands. This isn't gonna happen in one go. But once you are welcome of a brand, make sure that your professional, the communication is there. And you just wanted to build on that relationship in the future as well. Because it's very important if you are a photographer or sexual media influencer that you have this big network off brands that you could work with for the future. So I hope you enjoyed the lesson on was
10. Understanding Light: I have one. Welcome to this lesson on understanding. Like for on this course, we spoke a lot about how to use the camera, which settings to use have to take better pictures. We haven't really spoken too much about life. Life is key to making sure that your images are gonna look their best. And you're producing the best possible content of grab a few things around the house to help with this tutorial. I've got flashlight. I've got a reflector, which is just a bit white card and also got a clear plastic bag. I show you how this will come in handy later run. I've also borrowed a mannequin head from a really sweet lady. So she's gonna help with the tutorial, not the lady, but the mannequin head. Eso That's what we're gonna be doing today. These things are really, really simple. There's nothing too difficult. It's just the basics off understanding like, But once you do understand the basics and night, this will really help you when you're creating your content. It's just more things that if you keep in the back of your mind, will help you produce the better content. So I'm gonna take these fans upstairs now into a little studio on. We're going to start working straightaway on the basics off understanding light. So this is my light source. I'm gonna show you how light works. Just by using a flashlight. It'll works using the same principle. So let's talk about how light works. We're gonna switch from the torch now. Just going across the wall on this works in every single way with, like, this is how light works. So as you can see, the closer you are to the flashlight, Mawr incense. The light is going to be a the further we get away from the light, the light is gonna be weaker. It's not gonna be as intense on this. Doesn't matter which direction you move in. It could be up. It could be down. It all follows the same principle. Now, if we move the torch back towards the camera again is still following the same principle, it's less light here. But as I move the subject closer to the light, the more intense is gonna be on my hand so very quickly. I just want to talk about the shadows. And if I put my hand in here. As you can see, we have very clear and defined shadows behind me. But if I bring the hand closer to the subject slowly, the shadows getting more softer because the subject is closer to the life source, as you can see, the big difference in shadows. Now we're gonna use the plastic bag now to explain a little bit more. So now we're gonna use the plastic bag to show you what it looks like when you diffuse the light. So this is what it looks like without a plastic bag. As you can see, there is lots of harsh shadows. Now, if we just take this plastic bag, put some air in it just so it refuses the life a lot more. Now we're gonna put talk behind it. And as you can see, the light is diffused. A lot more spread out. And if we put our hand it now, the shadows are less. Arc, this works exactly the same with all life. This is acting as your diffuser. Wherever you move it, the light is going to be less. It's gonna be more softer. And this is exactly what you want. When you take in your pictures. So now I'm gonna show you how to create even soft light by using one of these white card that you can just pick up from anyway. So if we shine, talk on the wall As you can see, you've got a really, really intense like here, and you gotta bring that slowly goes bigger outwards. So if we just use this white card, we're going to reflect this torch onto the car and the light is gonna reflect off this onto the wall on. Basically, we're not going to get that room. That really strong, intense ring on the wall. The light is going to be dispersed a lot more because by creating a bigger light source, this called here is making the light spread out a lot more. And it's a lot more even as well. If we put a subject in there, then the shadows are going to be less. It's gonna be more soft, and this is exactly what you want, Dio. So now we have our lovely mannequin head. I'm just gonna shine the torch on her on. As you can see, just by showing in the torture, you can see these really defined shadows around her face. You have them coming across the face here. You have some on the neck. You also have some really big ones under on the side of a nose. And if we just moved the torch of round, you can see how these shadows are moving. We want to make these as soft as possible. So now we're gonna use the plastic bag like we did before, and we can see the difference between the two. So now we have our plastic bag. We're just gonna shine the torch fruit, the plastic bag like we've done before. And we're gonna see how different the shadows are on the face. As you can see, the light is much more soft. You're not getting them really harsh shadows on the face. And if we move it around, you can just see the difference. This is making we take this off and again. You got them half shadows back. So we really want to create the bigger light source by using something to spread it out on the subject. So now I want to show you what it's like using one of these cardboard bits that we used before. Now this hopefully will make the subject even more softer with the shadows. We're just gonna shine the torch on this board. And as we can see, everything is a little bit more soft than before, less harsh shadows. And that is because we're creating a bigger light source using this wooden card. And we're not pointing the light directly at the subject, but point in it somewhere else. And the light is reflected back on the subject. So let's talk about feathering now. If you shine the torch directly in her face, wanting to pay particular attention to the circles on her face and also in the background, we're gonna talk about Favorite and how it works. So with the torch directly on her face, you can see the light is really harsh. It's really intense. You got some shadows behind our nose. And if we just move this torch around, we're gonna use the favorite off the light. That's the circles under torch in the background that you can see just like her face a lot more, which is making sure that face is an outskirts. Off that favor like that, you can see and as you can see the light is improving so much more competitive if we're just shining the light directly in her face. So with shadows I want to show you an example Here, just a flat lay that I've just set up. I've got one light set up down here in the corner that you can't see, but it's basically where my hand is. If you look at the items that I want to shoot, you can see that this area here is nicely lit. But everything behind it is in a shadow on whether flat lay you want everything to be perfectly lit. Now, to get around this, there are two ways we can do it. The 1st 1 is just lifting the light source up higher. So you're facing it down on the flat lay and you get em bread off all those shadows. I'm also now gonna bring the light source fervor away from the items and this is disperse in the light evenly. Even more. The closer we go, the more shadows we are going to get Now. There is another way around this as well, and it's called using a fill light. Basically, this is just adding an extra light to the flat lay. I've set one up across here in the corner, so I'm just gonna switch that on now to feel the light so we can get rid of those shadows. So now I have switched the light on. As you can see, it has improved the image, but it's still not perfect because we still have some shadows slightly across here. But it's fill in the light from the back, so everything is lit a lot better. So the way we would get around this is it's just lifting our light sources up higher and shining them in the correct way. This is obviously a little bit overexposed, so you would just turn the light down slightly. But as you can see, just move in the light around is gonna have a different effect on your whole picture, just something to think about. So they just talked about the very basic principles of life. But one thing that you need to understand that every light source is different. So if you're using a flesh, this might be completely different, too. If you're using one of these for a video, the light source is always different, it might be more powerful. It might be less powerful. It's always going to be different. And I want to show you now the difference between the two. So, like I said before, every single light source is not built the same. So if I'm using that, say, a cannon flash, it might be this bright, full power. But if I'm using a different light source, such as a light stroke or something that you might see in the studio, it might be this bright. So S and C Every single light source is a little bit different on it's all dependent on the wattage that the light source is producing. Also, another thing to think about in terms of intensity off the lie. And that is, if you're moving the light source closer to the subject, then obviously again, this is gonna be more intense, very similar to the bag thing we've done previously. If we move that light source away again, this is gonna be a lot softer. So it all depends on how close the light is to your subject. How intense that is gonna be a so show you. I mean, I'm just gonna move the subject in front of this life. We're gonna pretend this is, let's say, a window. It's natural light. And as you can see, she's really up. It's really intense, but if we move her back, then this is gonna be a lot softer. The shadow is gonna be less so. It really matters the distance between subject on the light source. It seems really obvious, but just understand in how close your subject should be to the light is going to really improve your photography. So if briefly talked about intensity off light, and that's really important to understand that different light has different temperatures, and it's really important that you understand this and get it right, because it could really damage the image when you're taking a picture. So let's say, for instance, I have a really warm lamp over here in the corner, and I have direct some right over here, the east to temperatures. These two light sources are gonna clash with each trouble, so it's really important you control the light in your set in, not just with the intensity, but also with the temperature off the line as well. I'm gonna show you in a minute how we can control them on the differences it makes in terms off, setting it up on your camera as well. On your camera, you will have something called White Balance. Now this is just the camera control in the different temperatures off your life. Let's say, for instance, I am shooting a wedding on inside a church that is always really, really bad. So I have to make sure that my white balance inside my camera is set up correctly. So it gives me the right white balance. So it's really important to think about that as well. But I'm just going to show you now upstairs. So in terms of color of light, we can use the Kelvin Reference track that I will put up on the screen. But basically there is different colors of light, and this is what affects your imagery. So if we look at the subject and now this is represented with natural daylight, if we take the temperature down, this is going to represent some rise sunset. If we make it a little bit cooler, this might be an indoor lamp inside your house. And if we take that up this is going to represent shade on this light. I can only replicate around. They like cloudy day. I can't go up to the light shade or the deep shade. But if I was able to, then this would feel a lot more cooler would be more blue rather than having a little bit off orange in there. So it's really important that you understand the different light and how it affects the subject. Inside the camera, you can actually set up the white balance to make sure it's matching your light source. So here we have the light source here, which is representing daylight. So on the camera, we've got it set up on auto white balance, and this is what it replicates as the perfect picture. There's nothing wrong with using normal white balance. I often always use this unless I'm sure in a tricky situation. But now we're gonna show you what it looks like when you change the white balance. So now I've put the white balance into shade. As you can see, the image is really orange. It's a lot more warmer, and this is the effect that has. Now we've put the white balance into tongue stone. This is gonna be really, really blue, so you can see the difference between the two, and it's important you make sure this is set up correctly on your camera. But like I said, there's nothing wrong with using auto white balance. So now it's picture point that we're using tux done light, and now it's made the white balance go back to natural as possible has completely changed the look off the image, and it's really important that you just set the white balance up correctly. But this is how the camera corrects itself in terms of editing. If you're shooting a J pick, you are not going to be able to change the white balance, and you're gonna cause yourself a lot of problems when you're trying to fix the color. This is one of the reasons why I always recommend shooting on a raw because if you have it on the wrong set in, you can always change it afterwards so you can go down to the white balance and just correct it as you want. So that is one of the reasons why I always shoot on rule. So that is it for this lesson on understanding. Like I know it was a little bit basic in some areas. But just having a basic knowledge of understanding how light works is really gonna improve imagery. And it's also gonna improve your content creation. Frank, you guys for watching the lesson on, we'll see on the next one.
11. Instagram Advertising: Hi guys. Welcome back to court. In today's lesson, I really wanted to talk about Instagram advertising. What is instagram advertising? Is it gonna be beneficial to you should you use it and how to set up and add if you want to do it from your channel now, Instagram advertising is just basically you pay an instagram to advertise a post or a product that you're one into cell, push out to a larger audience. Instagram takes care of all of this. You just pay and it targets the right people for you. Now I'm not selling a product, but if you are selling products that this is gonna be really beneficial to you, especially gonna target in new audience people that don't follow you on. It's gonna push your product out there so which will hopefully bring a audience back to your channel which will hopefully invest in your brand or even sell products from your channel as well. Now people tend to think that if you're not selling a product, then there's no point in doing paid advertisements on Instagram. Now this is not true on there is nothing wrong with it as well. People tend to think that if it's very similar to, if you're buying likes or followers, that you should not be there in it is the complete opposite. If you are smoke brand or business or creator for talk of rock and you're looking to build your network, then I don't see any reasons why you wouldn't want to do it. But saying that it's very important that you get the paid advertisement set up correctly because you could waste a lot of money if you're not doing it correctly and support in your breach in the best possible audience that you can have your paid advertisement. So I'm gonna show you the best way to set it up after that. Gonna show you, too, on promotions that I already done on my channel. Just compare the two to see how much of a big difference it is when you choose a instagram and just making sure that you get and set up the right one correctly. So basically, that's what we gonna do. Now I'm just gonna go into my instagram account, and we're gonna look on how to set up a instagram promotion. So let's get started in setting up your instagram that now the first thing that you're gonna need to do is switch your account to a business account. It's not gonna work no other way. You also need to link your Facebook account Teoh instagram account because obviously these run together as Facebook instagram. But once you've done that, you can click on a picture that you want to promote, and underneath the picture you will see that promote button in blue really easy and simple to find, click and promote. This is gonna be where you're gonna send people. You can send them to your profile, your website or your direct messages if you click on the button on the bottom. The question mark, this is gonna be just a little bit more information on where you ordinance is gonna be sent to. So you profile your website direct messages because I'm not selling a product. I'm not gonna be taken people to a website, a Web shop or anything like that. I'm just going to send in my audience to my instagram profile so we can click on profile on here. You're going to see the next step which is defining your target audience. Now there's two options here that is automatic or there is create your own on late Iran. In this lesson, I will be talking about the differences between them and making sure that you pick the right one. But we're just going to define our own target audience. For now, we can create a running just by clicking the button at the bottom on. This is gonna be where you're gonna begin to target your own audience so we can target audience. And the next thing you want to do is pick the locations your rich so basically hate can type in any countries, any cities, any areas. This is gonna target these people in that area. So let's say United Kingdom, this will put you into, um, potential people that you reached around 46 million people. Now it's really important that you when you're talking in your audience, you need to decide whether you want to target ordinance that are already following you or you want to go into a new area. So let's say, for instance, I have a big following in the U. S. So if I set this add up for the U. S. A. I know people might be more interested in my product or my Instagram Page. If I went into an area that I don't really have many followers from, let's say, Spain, then potentially I could reach a new audience. But the likelihood is they're not gonna be really invested in my brand or my product because they haven't found me before. So this is something you really need to think about anyway, this continue. I didn't people that do the United States and we can see here. Now we've got 280 million people. This is gonna be too broad, so we're gonna take the U S S off. You wanted to be in the green Zone. You can add lots Mawr Hey, one. But it's gonna pick the United Kingdom for now. Click done. And this is gonna be way you start to pick your interests. Taking on the interest. Instagram already comes up with some interests that I think will be beneficial. So for me, it's travel care house child photography photographer. So my instagram channel is kind of like family life. Being a dad photographer on instagram was already four things for me, so that's actually really good so we can click on a child. We can click on parents in. We can click on troll care and then we can pick kindergarten. So these are the things that you can pick. You can pick as many interests that you want, but you just need to make sure that it's the same as your instagram account of wise. Your audience is gonna get a little bit lost, you know, tug in the right audience for your page. Just click down. Then you pick your age and gender. So for may it probably be an older crowd. Parents between 25 probably 40 again. That changes the thing itself as well. Take it to five. Um, again, you can choose your male or female as well. I just gonna keep keep that both if I am younger than off. See, I want to target a young audience. If I'm a brand who's selling clothes, that is for, like, teens and obviously on the target, the lower age. If I'm a brand that cell in a bit of an older products, that obviously I'm gonna target in older audience as well. But that's just click down there. Basically, that is done, then you go on suit. How much budget you want to spend? Like I said before, you don't really need to spend a lot of money. What I usually do is keep $30 once a week, maybe spread it out over two days. Now this is really, really broad. It's not really specific. And this is because Instagram doesn't know how your instagram ad it is gonna perform. So is get given me something quite broad, and obviously the more money you put in, the more estimate reach that's going to be. But you don't really need to spend too much. Let's just say 15 daily. Keep it at that. Then you were reviewing your promotion, and that is basically your promotion has been created. Instagram will get that out. Revenge 24 hours is usually a bit sooner, but it just needs to review it. Put it in the system on. Then it would start working. So now we've done that. I just want to show you two examples going back to where we were before creating your own audience or choosing automatic working out which one will probably be best for your brand. The picture that you can see on the screen now is basically the post I set myself. I defined the target audience myself, and now we're gonna compare it to the one that the Instagram done itself, the automatic one that we saw before. So this is the one that I set myself. And, as you can see, also bear in mind that this is the same amount of money spent on each add $30 over two days , $15 a day over two days. So, as you can see from this post, I got 805 promotion clicks. That's how many people clicked on my page. Now from the other paid advertisement from Instagram that only got 110 clicks. So a really, really big difference from the one that I've done myself. It got 1251 people came to my instagram page, where only 469 came to my profile from the Instagram one again, a very, very big difference again. Very big difference when it comes to impressions with the one that set myself. It was 161,067 of my 67% of my impressions came from this promotion from the other one. It was only 20%. So again a very big difference in terms of followers. 218 came for the one that I set up and also 17 followers. Only 17 followers came from the automatic one from Instagram. So as you can see, it's a really, really big difference. That is because I was able to tailor it myself on As you can see down here with the audience, I talk it just women. So it was 100% women on the other one. It was 39% men and 61% women. If you look at the age range, target this to my audience that are already following May, which is 62% 25 34 again with the instagram one. It was very low, is a low age. It was 18 to 24 was 58%. So Instagram decided to target a lower age with their advertising. I think this is my bin. One of the reasons why I didn't get many likes it, then get money engagement on think it many followers because a lot of my audience is a little bit more grown up on the locations here. You can see a really big difference with the one that set up I was targeting in South America on the promotion that Instagram's out for me was targeted all in their mark just in Denmark. So as you see a really big difference between the two, I was going to sell a product. I would probably skipped the Instagram advertisement and I would go over to Facebook. Facebook obviously owns Instagram on. They have a much better place, but advertising over there have lots of different options. You can really target defined audience, and they just have so many different options that Instagram doesn't have. So, for instance, you could advertise on instagram stories where if you don't that on Instagram, there's no option for that. So if you're selling a product, if you're a bigger business or bigger brand us used to advertise in, then I would probably go to Facebook, link the two together and then run the INSTAGRAM ad. From there, you can also run Facebook ads as well. So that is something to think about. If you're just looking to both boost your instagram page, boost an instagram post, then just do it from Instagram. It's a lot more easier. The Facebook, as is a little bit more technical and you really need to play around for much longer time. So just bear that in mind. Anyway, that is the end of the lesson. Just a really quick lesson on how to use Instagram advertising. I really hope you enjoyed the lesson and hopefully you got something out of it. If you was thinking about using INSTAGRAM ads for your your business or your brand, so when you guys
12. Understanding Algorithm: Hi, guys. Welcome back to the course in today's lesson, we're gonna be talking about the instagram algorithm. I'm telling you what algorithm is and just how does it affect your content that you're creating Now, this has been a subject that I've been trying to figure out for many, many years. But I think in the past six months or so have finally found a way just toe not beat it. But just the work of it on. That's what we're doing today. I'm just gonna be going through all my tips off what I've learned throughout the years to hopefully help you manage the Al groom on Instagram. So when that instagram algorithm came out, there was so much confusion amongst creators on before, when you posted on Instagram, it would just be in your feed according to the latest posts. Then when the algorithm came, it kind of changed and it throw everyone off a little bit. But I'm just going to read you a comment that Instagram made back in January 2000 and 19 just to help you understand how the algorithm works and what they're focused on. So let's start with the comment. They made it says what shows up first in your feed is determined by what posts and accounts you engage with the most, as well as others contributing factors. Such a timeless off posts how often you use instagram and how many people you follow. So basically, Instagram our river means that it's gonna prioritize, showing you, your family and friends on accounts that it thinks that you like, so it's gonna prioritize them over anything else. So is this a good thing, or is it a bad thing if you are a small business or someone who's just starting up on its the ground? This is probably gonna be a problem. Now this is that some of the problems that I run into I found my my engagement was completely cut on. Even people that were family and friends won't even see my posts on. I actually didn't see Caroline's Post evil, so there was a lot of confusion at the time to how was this actually work in? But if you actually just want to use it as a hobby, this is probably a great thing, because it's gonna push your family and friends. But anyway, I'm just gonna show you. Now, if you are a small business, I want to give you some tips on how to use the algorithm to help your business grow, because you need to kind of outsmart it in a way that people are actually seeing your posts . Otherwise, your posts just gonna get lost amongst all these other posts that everyone's been created. So let's just go through and start with some of the things that we're gonna be talking about today, and the 1st 1 is to create high quality content. Now this might seem obvious, but as your user is scrolling through instagram, you literally have a few seconds to get noticed. So you really want to go that extra mile to create images that is just gonna be bycatch in and stop that user from scrolling if you just analyze your own behavior on instagram either This the other day and I found myself just scrolling, not really looking what was happening. Eso. That's why it's important just to create eye catching content and take it to the next level . So if you are a landscape photographer, the more epic the more beautiful your imagery is, the more chance you are gonna have for that user to stop and like your image. If you are a interior photographer and you shoot in a corner, you might need to paint a war. You might need to move furniture around like now. We need to start thinking outside the box to create this perfect imagery, and you need to go to the extra mile. It's really, really important, and that is the 1st 1 to working with the Instagram algorithm. So Number two and that is to take instagram stories seriously now, as far as I'm aware, there's no really algorithm to instagram stories just yet. On what I love about Instagram stories is it takes the pressure away from me as a content creator to create high quality content all the time. Chasing content can be really stressful thing, and if you look into post every single day on your feet, this is going to take its toll and it becomes really stressful. I love stories because it's quick and easy to use, and basically I just share little clips of my daily life, and it's a great way to interact with people. It's really good at getting people from your stories over to your feet. Now, if you are a small business or a content creator, you should be using stories every single day. There's a whole other lesson that we've done for you on instagram stories. So if you want to improve or take your instagram stories a little bit more seriously than you should check that out as well. So Instagram loves it when you use the tours of features on what I really recommend is using instagram life. Now, this isn't gonna affect you in the algorithm, but what it does is it puts you in a priority list on a story bar across the top. So this is basically you are gonna get seen a lot more now. It's really important that you use Instagram live with a subject and you want to plan ahead . So what I do is on what I really recommend is just making a plan and let in my audience know a couple of days before that I'm going live with a certain subject. This means that when you go live, you're gonna have people interactive you and you already have some questions that people have asked. So you're not just opening your screen on. You don't know what to do because Instagram live can be a little bit stressful sometimes, and it could be a little bit awkward if no one's engaging with view. So just make a plan. Get people to us questions. Then you're ready. Teoh. Talk about something with your audience. Now what do you talk about with May I like to talk about many different things, and I give a specific subject to my live video. So I might be talking about if my family what it's like to be that I might be doing a photography Q and A. So you really need to think of a subject. If you're a small business in the fashion industry, you might want to do a subject on sustainability. So just go in there. Be really specific on what you want to talk about and just use the tools and features that instagram has being. So how often should you go live on? How long should each life session being? Now for me, I would probably do it once a week with a specific subject. You really don't want to overdo it if you're doing it every single day, then this might get a little bit strange on. To be honest, there's not really much you can talk about because everyone's already fought with questions they want to ask you. So it basically waiting out once a week gives you a whole week off people building up questions for you to ask your audience on. You're gonna be up to give them a lot more answers. This is gonna make the life video a lot more interesting. If you have a lot to talk about, then on Instagram Live session could last anywhere from 30 minutes to now, but that's all dependent on you. But just make sure it's not too long and it's not too quick because you want to really make sure that everyone gets that information so very quickly. And Number four is to create video content Now. Instagram has been really pushing video creation in the past few years, not just with I G TV with just videos in general. So if you create videos for your feed, if you're creating videos for your content, then you're likely to get bumped up in the algorithm. Now I heard a rumor I don't know how true is. But basically Instagram will bump you up in the algorithm if someone stops on your picture in the feed as their scrolling. If there are new picture for long, within two seconds, they're gonna bump you up in the algorithm. So if you create video, this is basically going to stop the user from scroll in and they're gonna be on your post longer because you're gonna see a video and you're gonna watch it longer. I don't know how true that is, but I've used it for myself, and it seems to work so you can try that out for yourself. So number five and that is to write the perfect caption. Now Instagram prioritizes strong engagement over everything else. If you have a post with lots of engagement, that means likes comments, shares, saves all that kind of thing is going to place you up higher in the algorithm. So your caption must be really imaginative. Needs to go with this beautiful imagery that you've created Do not waste high quality imagery of a really bad comment. Sometimes I've done a post, and I'm sure you an example that I thought was really nice. I just left an emoji on their Sometimes I didn't even write anything on that so silly of me because it just is not getting people talking. It's not getting people engaged. So the more you get people engaged, the better now, right in The caption to get people engaged could be a question. It could be asking for someone's opinion. So you need really need to think creatively an outside the box that more clients you're going to get, the more engagement you're gonna get, Which means the higher up in the algorithm you're gonna be. So in a previous lesson, I talked about the importance of using a carousel when you're posting on image. So basically, now, when I post an image amusing 5 to 10 images on posting less frequently, but I'm more focused on the storytelling. I'm doing this because basically it creates a really good story and stories are key to engagement. So if you're making every nice story of your posts, you're basically gonna have more comments. More comments means more engagement, but basically means you could be higher up in the algorithm. So when you're posting, really think about using the carousel to create a story to get people engaged into your post. Great thing with Paracels on what people go absolutely crazy for is before and after images . Now, this is crazy how much this works. So I'm gonna show an example Now, my friend William, he posted a picture of himself. I think it was around 10 years ago, and then he posted a picture of himself what he looked like. Now this picture literally broke the internet. It went viral. People went crazy for it. Another great use off before and afters is that we have a house, channel, home renovation channel and basically we always post before and after pictures off our projects. Now, people go absolutely crazy for these. It just don't when it does. But people are really engaged with before and after pictures. So you can also use your story car ourselves for that as well. So finally, I just want to talk about how often you should post and how this affects you in the algorithm. Now, Before the algorithm came into place, people were literally posting free to four images a day because they knew you just be up in everyone's feed. You be scrolling and be another picture off you. But then people started to realized OK, this is a bit too much. It started to become oversaturated. People started to get annoyed, which may be lost you a lot of followers. But then that instagram algorithm came into place and then people started to post less frequently, maybe one every three days. And then people started to realize maybe this is a bit too much because everyone's engagement started to be cut at least 80%. So then people started to post once a day. Now this basically people fought, that would keep you in the system. It will keep you in the loop off the algorithm by posting frequently. But then I've noticed this has kind of changed and everyone that is doing well on Instagram now with engagement they're using Instagram carousel is to create a story now post in less frequently. But with biggest storytelling is probably what's key. So for me now, I get a really great story together on a post it every four days are not posting regularly every single day now and I found that really helps with the algorithm. This means people are kind of waiting for your next post on your still in the loop of the algorithm because you're creating a really engaging story. So I think at the moment, that is probably the best way to be in terms of how often you should post. So before we finish up with this lesson on album, I fought the fun idea to debunk some of these algorithm questions we've all asked herself. Throughout the years, using social media on the answers have actually come from Instagram themselves. So what? We're really nice way to end the lesson just so I could get a little bit more clarity on how the Instagram algorithm works. First myth. Thus instagram prioritized imagery over video. Now Instagram have said there is zero bias. It doesn't matter if you're posting imagery or video, it's always gonna be the same. And I know I said previously in a video that Instagram has been pushing video. So let me just explain a little bit. If you go on to explore Page, you will see there is a lot of video content, probably more than imagery. So, as you can see, Instagram is slightly pushing the video content. But in terms of the feed and the algorithm, it has zero biased battle, so number to do fake interactions count as engagement. Now, Instagram have a really clever system where they're able to detect bots, pods, anyone and big groups that just saying the same thing all the time or just using the same emoji all the time. So this is not going to affect your algorithm. So if you have in lots of different bots on your posts, this is not gonna count as engagement. So you're right in a little emoji on someone's picture. Does this count as engagement? There was once a time where people didn't think that this included as engagement and it had to be a number of words. Well, that's not actually true, Instagram have said. Just even write in one word can count as engagement ever. Myth is that people tend to think that business pages are promoted higher. They're higher up in the algorithm. But instagram, I've actually come out and said that doesn't matter. If you are a small business, a content creator or if it's just your personal page, everyone is treated the same. So does Instagram Post you hire in the algorithm. If you get more comments and likes in the 1st 30 minutes when you post on the answer to that is no, it doesn't matter. Whereas if we look tic tac algorithm is really pushing you for the 1st 30 minutes. So people tend to think that post in in really specific times, because this is when people are online more by getting more engagement in the first photo minutes, we'll put you up in the algorithm is not actually true. So that is it for this lesson on algorithm, how to use it and how to work with it on Instagram. Now, if there's one key point gives you from this lesson and that is always focused on relationships, no, just the reach. So this means creating loyalty and always engaging with your audience. If someone comments on your post, always like it, always reply. Just don't ignore them. That's the worst things you can do. Go on to other people's profiles like shared comment and just do the same as you would expect someone to do on your post. That's really key. Don't fixate on just posting content bill relationships. Engage with others that is really important probably the most important thing you need to take away from this lesson. I really hope you enjoyed the lesson. I'm still trying to figure out how the algorithm works every single day. Hopefully, this made you understand what it is a little bit on how to use it. So thank you guys for watching. And we see you on the next one.
Anthony Bogdan, Photographer/Videographer
