Social Influencer Photography

Social media has brought tremendous changes in almost every component of our daily lives. Similarly, the field of photography has also undergone a major transformation with changing social trends and the effects of social influencers. Let us understand this up-and-coming commercial genre of social influencer photography.

The social influencer

Social influencers are those public figures that have many social media followers and produce quality social media content which is consumed by a mass online audience. As the name rightly suggests, social media figures become influencers as people begin to trust and listen to their opinions and content, and to an extent begin to practice similar things to that of the social media figure.

These influencers tap into different communities or niches of their own. They continually post and create content based on these niches and have captured a hold over their own set of social consumers. This makes it easier for the brands to also identify the target audience based on the social influencers’ personality.

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THIS IS FOR YOU IF YOU LOVE INFLUENCING OTHERS

Social influencer demographics

Many brands make use of such personalities to present their products effectively to a large, targeted audience. Moreover, Social media influencers are not necessarily film stars or famous singers or dancers, but they just may be regular college-goers as well. This improves their connection with the audience and gives a more local and genuine appeal to the brands. Hence, social media influencers will usually enter into barter collaborations or paid partnerships where they then produce images and photographs of the sponsored products either in use or as a part of a social media post that includes the social influencer and presents them in an aesthetically pleasing way.

As with most photographic and media genres, planning your shoot is as important for social influencer photography as for any other commercial shoot.
Photography Reference

Aesthetics in social influencer photography

The art of capturing products aesthetically or creating social media posts around the products to increase the audience base is called social influencer photography. There are tens of thousands of social media influencers on multiple social media platforms across the world who have embraced social influencer photography to widen their fan following, and to provide optimum results for brand collaborations and partnerships. This has also paved the way for new job opportunities where influencers hire specifically skilled photographers for social influencer photography.

Pursuing social influencer photography

Whether you have your own Instagram or Facebook page and are planning to utilize your skills for yourself or trying to work as a freelancer for multiple other social influencers, we have a few inspirations and ideas to help you go about practicing social influencer photography.

Know your brand

The first step is doing your homework correctly! If you are going to be capturing a product or a model using the product, you need to be aware of exactly what the product stands for and what ideologies they are trying to promote. Once you know these two things, it will become easy as you will know precisely what you need to focus on to bring produce the desired outcome for the social influencer client.

Planning in advance

As with most photographic and media genres, planning your shoot is as important for social influencer photography as for any other commercial shoot. While researching the brand and the influencer that you will be working with, make it a point to note down the features that will be important. For example, deciding the colour palette and backgrounds for your shoot, etc.

Props

Using relevant props will help you communicate with the audience. For example, adding in shades of green and natural elements for an eco-friendly product, or using props such as mats and tropical prints for a chilled drink product. You need to customize each and every photo shoot to tailor the brands, their products provided and the influencer’s expectations.

Tips and tricks for social influencer photography

Social influencer photography is a varied combination of product photography as well as fashion photography. It is a unique blend of these two which has an aim to produce vibrant and aesthetic outcome. Here are a few tips and tricks to get that product out right!

Rule of thirds

A common yet the most forgotten tip for social influencer photography – using the rule of thirds! For those who are unaware of this rule, it means implementing a grid of 3×3 on your screen. You then align the elements of interest in the composition to each grid line or each point in the grid lines. It serves as a blueprint to place all your important elements. Other guides include diagonal lines, the golden triangle, golden spiral and golden ratio. However, make sure you don’t overthink these rules! As long as you have a balanced and pleasing results that your social influencer client is satisfied with, then you have achieved the right result.

Feed the feed

All social influencers will pay close attention to their social networks, so ensure that you maintain their social media feed acceptably and that it is aesthetically pleasing. For Instagram reels and posts, consider thinking in terms of three posts to make sure you are balancing the feed well.

Maintaining the feed does not only mean posting three pictures from the same series, but it also means colour coordinating and syncing the entire feed to feel like a signature style.

Simple and consistent editing

Consistency is key in social content. An account will attract an audience based on what the audience likes about the influencer and keeping the likelihood of followers constant will almost guarantee growth of the account. So, ensure that you keep similar colour palettes and similar presets while editing, whilst avoiding stark contrasts and dark colours that may make the images look dramatically over-edited. Keep the editing simple and ensure that the feed has a similar type of editing throughout to maintain and keep the feed consistent.

Equipment and camera settings

s social media is an open platform and social influencer marketing focuses more on common people, you need not necessarily have all the high-tech equipment or even DSLRs for this type of photography. One can easily photograph and edit quality pictures from advanced android and IOS devices.

If you are planning to professionally pursue this, then you can start by acquiring any basic DSLR camera that falls within your budget and by photographing images in RAW mode. Photographing in RAW mode will allow for greater post-processing flexibility due to the larger gamut of colours and detail retained in the image. Other camera settings for this type of photography will differ from one photo shoot to the other, but all will follow basic rules. So, get to know your camera or devices’ manual camera settings well.

Move on from selfies

It is time to move away from selfies and bring a complete revolution to the social media realm. Try practicing the art of social influencer photography for your own social media channels first, and you may see the amazing benefits and positive changes in your work over time that could socially-influence others!