- Light matters. You can't just stick your book down in any random place, take a picture, and have it look like the best thing in all of ever. Outside? Might get washed out. Inside, but not by windows? Too dark. Artificial light? Now all my pictures are yellow. So you have to find the best spot for pictures (which, for me, happens to be my desk. Or my stairs, if the lighting on my desk is bad at that time), and then the best time. Because pictures taken on my desk at 5:00 at night look great, but at 8:00 pm they look awful. Or at 7 am because lighting.
- Take pictures ahead of time. Because when it decides to rain for 7 days straight you aren't getting any pretty lighting or outdoor shots, and there's only so many different ways you can rotate that book so it won't reflect the light straight back into the camera. So when it's 8 pm at night and you don't have the lighting to do anything, you will have backups and can post away!
- It will take a while to find a theme. I've seen all of these super pretty pictures with tons of color and flowers (a really good example is @paperfury because her pictures are AMAZING) and I so wanted to do that but I've figured out that, because I have like no props, I'm more of a minimalist-desky person (when the lighting is good. Stupid lighting.). You just have to figure out what works for you with what you have.
- Library books are a PAIN to photograph. Because I can't afford to buy a new book basically every other day I get A LOT of my books from the library. But those shiny jackets are so hard to take pictures of because GLARE! This has played a large role in the time that I chose to take photos because if the lighting is juuuussst right then you won't get glare.
- Taking notes helps A LOT for reviews. Instead of just trying to remember everything that you want to say and all of the things that you want to point out, write them down, cry because you can't understand your own writing, and start over! I'm kidding about this (kind of), it really does help, a lot! I just recently started taking notes and I've realized that it makes my life much easier, although a little sad because my notes are ugly.
- It gets hard when you get busy. Duh, right, but all of a sudden you are trying to read books and write reviews and post every day and sometimes my brain just wants to go *boom* because why are there only 24 hours in a day? Also sleep. I need sleep but I also need to write a review or read a book and priorities get screwed up.
- Interact with people. I didn't know this when I started and I am SO SORRY to all those nice people who reached out to me in the comments and I didn't respond. I had no clue what I was doing and my life was a little bit of a mess (just a little *laugh/sobs quietly*). If you interact with others it's a heck of a lot more fun and who knows, you may just find some people who like a random book just as much as you do!
- Don't type your blog post in Pages and then paste it into your blog because then the font gets all funky.
- Links don't work in Instagram posts 😕. I mean I still post links there because maybe it's helpful (?) but it took someone pointing it out to me for me to realize what was going on. Whoopsies.
I'm sure that in a couple more months I will have even more to add to this list. Although my dreams of becoming some awesome professional photographer have definitely been shattered, I would say that I've (hopefully) improved! And one day I will have photos waiting just in case. One day. Just... not today.
For fellow bookstagrammers/bloggers out there, what were some things that you wish you had known when you started? Anything that you've learned that would be helpful for someone who is awful at taking photographs?
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