Love landscape photography, and want to share your own show-stopping shots online? For nature photographers, it can be really hard to navigate the restrictive rules of square formatting on Instagram – and alas, Instagram is where you’re most likely to find fans of your shots today.
But don’t fret. Below, we dive into some of the best and unsung ways you can post your landscape photos for Instagram success.
Resize And Reshape
First, resizing your images for Instagram is likely necessary if you’re a landscape pro. It’s heartbreaking, but it doesn’t have to take away the magic of your shots. The advantage of the 4:5 ratio is that square images take up almost the entirety of the phone screen, so fitting your wider framed shots into the grid just doesn’t work. Unless you could somehow expand it? That’s right. Today, there are incredible tools that can fill out your images to the shape required for an Instagram post.
Start with Photoshop’s AI image extender, which – even if you’re a beginner at editing photos – does all the hard work for you. This nifty tool will generate more of the image organically so you can utilise your special shots in all different kinds of shapes, sizes and formats. This way, you won’t be messing with the essence of your photographs while still making sure they’re ready to be posted on Instagram.
Pro tip: want to turn your recognisable Instagram landscape shots into posters for events (i.e. future gallery openings)? Photoshop also allows you to add text and other elements to your image directly without ruining your special frame. Be sure to keep your resized image assets in your Photoshop library to make sure they’re always accessible for future editing jobs.
Edit For Social Media
Brightness and colours look different on phones, and images often feel low-res on Instagram for different reasons. As a photographer, editing is part and parcel with taking shots and getting practice editing your images for different platforms is a great experience. Play around with your image editing settings – whether it’s colour grading, changing up the saturation, or even just making small adjustments – until it looks as good as possible through a phone screen.
Instagram has built-in editing tools, so before you post the photo, you can make the adjustment through the app, too. A great way to help you stand out from the crowd is by creating a theme for your images and adding inspiring Instagram captions to make them look cohesive. This encourages people to come back and see what you’re doing next.
Try Your Luck Off the Beaten Path
Social media thrives on different perspectives. With this truth in mind, a great way to build an Instagram audience is by finding new and unusual locations to photograph.
Think of novel subjects like derelict buildings, decaying ruins of an old warehouse out of town, or other similar sights that people just can’t access every day. Consider taking a road trip to a nature spot where you can capture some amazing shots, and on the way, look for unusual or quirky sights to capture too.
This approach will help you create unique content that will drive engagement and exposure, and your Instagram audience will be curious to see where you’re heading next. While Instagram is for finding and following trends, strong Instagram creators are the ones who start them.
Stick To The Rule Of Thirds
Great photographers know that the composition of your photograph is just as important as its subject. Here’s where the rule of thirds comes in to help add depth and a natural ease to your photos.
Applying the rule of thirds when you take your photos will mean you don’t have to cut too much out when you post to Instagram. Do this by drawing two vertical and horizontal imaginary lines through your shot. These lines should be spaced evenly apart to create three sections, and nine sections with all four lines.
When taking your picture, if the subject (i.e. a tree, a cloud, or even a mountain) is either on one of the intersections of these lines or on the lines themselves, it’s much more appealing to a viewer.
Don’t Be Afraid To Use Your Phone
As a photographer, you’ll want to use your best equipment accessible to you for the perfect pictures. But sometimes, you might not have the time or capacity to carry all of your equipment around with you, so don’t be afraid to use your smartphone.
Smartphones today have high-quality cameras with intuitive editing software that allow you to take images of spontaneous moments and share them immediately. Plenty of Instagram photographers today also challenge themselves to create stunning shots with their iPhone cameras, so there are plenty of hashtags you can use to promote your phone shots and elevate your profile.
Reels Drive The Traffic
Yes, your photographs speak for themselves, but as we know, in the current algorithmic climate, Instagram is pushing reels the most. Endless scrolling, exploring pages and sharability are all reasons why reels contribute towards more engagement.
This isn’t to say that you need to become a videographer overnight to take advantage of today’s ‘Reels’ culture. You can even participate by simply creating a slideshow of your images to develop a reel format that showcases your art. All you need to do is resize them and edit them into video format for sharability. Again, tools like Photoshop or even Adobe Express can help here, thanks to their preset templates for Instagram posts and reels.
Time Is Your Best Friend
Not only is the time and effort you put into taking your pictures important, but posting your images at the right time on Instagram also makes a huge difference. Using Instagram analytics, creators are now paying attention to when their audience is most likely to engage with their work. These tools can also be beneficial for gauging your page demographics – it helps to know what kind of audience you’re trying to connect with, so figuring out who they are and when they’re ready to engage is the perfect way to optimise your social media presence.
Equally important is spending time engaging with your active audience as well. It helps to make friends and comment on their posts to make sure Instagram knows that you’re actively using the app, not just trying to grow a following.
Final Thoughts
For landscape photographers, Instagram’s platform isn’t quite built for you, but with some extra work and the right tools like image resizers and extenders and perhaps even some social media analytics, you can grow an audience that falls in love with your art the same way portrait photographers do. We hope, with these simple tips, you’re able to grow your photography Instagram account organically and efficiently.