3 Unusually Simple Photo Tricks To Quickly Up Your Instagram Game

We’ve all seen it happen. Heck, it happened to me.

Your Instagram feed starts off being fairly original, but as time passes, and with a not-so-healthy dose of constant pressure for likes and engagement, you begin to change your style to conform to the mainstream look. Soon, you can’t tell the difference between your photos and those of thousands of other similar profiles.

When you go out to shoot, you‘re no longer looking for what captures your eye or tickles your fancy (always did love that saying)—now, instead, you’re viewing the world in a 3-by-3 grid, continually asking yourself: “Will that work in my feed?” or “But will people comment on this?”

Not surprisingly, for all of the good that Instagram has done in bringing photography to the forefront of our shared cultural consciousness, so too has it chilled much of the originality that the art form was built on.

Ok, mini-essay over. Let’s get to the point.

A great photographer sees the same world in a different light. Today, I want to share three simple techniques with you, which you can use to add a bit of flare, fun, and variety to your photos. All of these techniques are easily achievable with a basic DSLR camera. The three are: (1) light painting, (2) glass ball, (3) warp speed.

1 | Light Painting

The first technique is called “light painting.” But first, you need to understand how shutter speed works. Ok, you’re back? Great. Second, you need to have a tripod (or some sort of stable surface). Also, I should mention that light painting only works at night or in very low-light conditions.

**Step 1: **Set up your camera on a tripod. Here’s the one I use. (+ this)

Step 2: Set your camera to the slowest shutter speed. Thirty seconds is the normal maximum on most cameras before you get into ‘Bulb’ setting, which I’ll save for another day.

Step 3: Close your aperture—you’ll have to find the right balance, but I normally shoot for something around f/22. As I discussed in this post, this creates a wide depth of field so your entire scene is in focus.

**Step 4: **Set your camera to Timer mode, (even if just for a 2-second timer) so that you aren’t actually touching the camera when the shutter opens.

**Step 5: **Now, here comes the fun part. Grab a light source—this could be your phone flashlight (what I used for the NYC heart photo below), ball of steel wool that you’ve added a few embers to (I’ll explain in another post, but hold off on this one for now), or let the scene paint for you like I did with the Big Ben shot below. Run through the scene while the shutter’s open. Write in the sky. Whatever floats your boat. When the shutter closes 30 seconds later, you’ll have something quite special.

2 | Glass Ball

The next technique is fairly straightforward but produces really magical results. All you need is a small glass ball, available for purchase here on Amazon for about $14.

Step 1: Hold the glass ball out in front of you or place it on a surface where it won’t roll away. The scene behind the ball will be rendered upside down, but that’s ok, we’ll fix that when we edit.

**Step 2: **Widen your aperture to f/4 and focus your camera on the scene in the distance, and shoot!

**Step 3: **When you edit the photo, the first (and really only) thing you’ll need to do is to flip the photo 180º so the scene in the distance is now in focus—and voila! There you have it.

3 | Warp Speed

The final technique I’ll share with you today is what I like to call “warp speed photography.” This technique, while seemingly complicated, is also surprisingly simple. You don’t need any props, or even a tripod, for this one. Well, I lied, you will need some sort of zoom lens—nothing fancy, but it can’t be a prime lens (only one focal length).

**Step 1: **Start by zooming all the way in on your subject. It helps if this is in the center of your frame.

Note:*** ***This technique works best for landscapes or monuments. People? Not so much.

**Step 2: **Once zoomed in, set your shutter speed to something not too fast, but not too slow. I’d suggest somewhere between 1/4th and 1/20th of a second. This is a bit of personal preference.

**Step 3: **The trick here is we’re going to zoom out during the exposure. So right before you click the shutter release, start to zoom out. Then click! The result should be this warp speed look. I’ve also found that zooming out works better than zooming in because you’ll have your desired subject in focus and the rest of the world will warp around that point.

I hope you enjoyed this quick tutorial.

Please drop me a note in the comment section or on Twitter @jackcohenphoto. And, of course, if you take any photos using these techniques, tag me on Instagram!

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