The Instagram Husband Training Camp

We all want our significant others to candidly photograph us looking off into the sunset. But sorry darling it ain’t happening. The only candid’s I get are of me asleep on the couch with hair and my saliva splattered all my face, and as much as you’d all like to laugh at me, I’m not posting that one on Instagram. Now by no terms is Bradley now a fully trained Instagram Husband, he’s still trying to get his qualification. But he’s a massive step ahead of what he used to be. Most images used to be either blurred, half my body cut out or he’d taken a selfie instead of taking a photo of me (not funny btw). Over the past year or so I’ve been getting him to take more and more photos of me and he has massively improved. I can guarantee that at least one of the photos he takes is either a) pretty spot on, or b) salvageable.

Below are my useful techniques at getting teaching your significant other how to be your personal Instagram Photographer. Either read them yourself and push these habits onto them or just send them this whole damn post!

Show them what you want

Tell them to take more than one

Letting them know that you don’t just want one half arsed photo, that you want them to keep clicking to give you the highest chance of a firm favourite (or a few!). Because surely in one of the shots you’ll be blinking, smirking, have hair blowing in your face or some stranger will be watching you in the background! Another way you can tackle this (at least for iPhone, I’m not sure on other phones), if you have Live Photos on, you can click ‘edit’ on your image and use the slider to choose the best frame for the image. A frame before you blinked, or a frame where you were actually smiling. I use this tool a lot especially with a fast-moving blurry toddler!

Change up your pose

I find having a range of different poses means you can use more images to your advantages, like these above, weren’t taken intended for this blog post but they come in very handy. If you look at the way I am sat it changes, which causes different light effects over my hair, clothes and face. This is something you need to think about whilst you’re posing. I try to keep myself in two minds, one being what my body and face are physically doing, and two is imagining what I look like from the camera’s point of view. This means the brad isn’t all to blame if the photos end up shit, its a little my fault too (although I’ll never tell brad its my fault).

Set up camera settings yourself

If you’re using a camera instead of your phone make sure to set the ISO, aperture and shutter speed yourself before handing them the camera. Check that it all works for the location you’re in and then just hand it over. I would always recommend shooting in RAW format with your DSLR. Shooting in RAW gives you so many more options when it comes to editing, the most important being the exposure. So if your partner makes a rookie mistake with lighting, it’s one simple fix. If worst comes to worst just stick them in AUTO and hope your camera plays ball.

Be respectful of the effort and time

Sometimes photos just don’t work, they come out rubbish or you just weren’t looking as good as you thought you were that day. I always make sure to thank Brad after his photograph efforts even if I know I wouldn’t show a single soul the images he took. Being constantly asked to take photographs when you *know* you’re not great at it must be a pain. I mean I’d love to take photographs all day long of someone (anyone local need a blog photographer i’m your gal!).

Do you have an ‘Instagram Husband’? Or perhaps someone who is always on hand to take photographs for you? I’d love to have someone I could meet up with regularly in the week to take snaps of each other – it would make the whole Instagram and blogging game an easier one for sure. Have you got any tips yourself that so I can part more wisdom on to Bradley?

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