The Past and Present of Daisies and Delights - Photography

Today, I thought I'd take a trip down memory lane and look back at my blog from when it was first created to now. One of the areas of blogging that I've definitely improved in is photography, as I've gone from not caring how my photos look to taking a lot of time and effort to achieving something that I'm proud of and that is aesthetically pleasing. Although I've still got a long way to go, there has been a noticeable change in the way I take photos of products and it's crazy to see my initial attempt at photography from where I first started my blog, back in February 2014. I thought it'd be interesting to look back at my old blog photos and compare them to my current ones, so I hope you like this post!

When I started blogging, I didn't realise the importance of photography and how images can attract readers, especially from aesthetic-dependant websites like Pinterest. To take a photo of a product, I'd simply place it on my duvet and capture the photo, without paying any attention to intricate details such as the positioning of the product and the lighting. The pattern of my duvet didn't match my blog design at all, so the images looked out of place on my blog and you could clearly see that minimal effort was required to create the photographs. Also, no editing took place, as I didn't think it was necessary and, as you've probably gathered by now, I wasn't a huge fan of the aesthetic side of my blog. I would upload the images into Blogger so that they were really small on the page, making them not at all eye-catching or creative, which is something that I've only recently changed.

After almost a year of taking photographs for my blog on my duvet, I realised that I wanted a change and to make my photos look more professional, so I settled on a white background. I'd seen a lot of other bloggers use minimalistic backgrounds like this and I thought that it was a great way to draw attention to the products, opposed to a distracting pattern in the background which was the case with my previous photos. However, this ended up looking grey in a lot of photos, as I didn't know much about natural lighting or enhancing my photos by editing them. Believe it or not, I use the exact same surface for my current blog photographs, so it really shows how little details and the correct technique can make a huge difference. I actually think that these images look worse than the previous ones, simply because they're so dull and boring. However, this was the starting point for how I take my blog photos today, so I'm glad that I was able to improve and, if I didn't take photographs like this at one point, I wouldn't be where I am today.

The photos that you can see above mark the point when I discovered editing and filters, which were used quite heavily at first. What I didn't realise was that editing your photos is supposed to enhance them and make minor adjustments to improve them, rather than completely changing how they look. Above, you can see two examples of photos that I over-edited and added filters that were unnecessary, simply because I thought they looked nice. On the left, I added a pink filter which I thought would look creative, but obviously wasn't the best choice, and on the right I tried incredibly hard to make the background look white, causing everything to have a blue undertone to it. I've definitely realised since then that editing should be more subtle and I usually stay far away from filters, as this was a learning curve for me. These photos are also the point when I decided to photograph all of my products together, rather than a separate image for each item, which is something that I still do to this day.

This was the point where I actually started to take my blog photography seriously and improved the way I took photos, which is quite shameful if I'm honest as it was only about 6 months ago. I started looking at other blogs for inspiration and searched for online tutorials that taught me invaluable techniques, which, coupled with my previous experiences of photography, helped me to produce some images that I was proud of. I'd finally figured out how to edit images so that they looked brighter and the colours were more vivid, yet nothing was too over the top. However, both of these images were quite boring, with nothing to look at except the product itself, as this was before I discovered the use of props and other products in the background.

We have finally reached the present day, and above you can see where I'm currently at with photography. Although I'm still working really hard to improve this, I can definitely tell that I'm getting somewhere and that my dedication is paying off. I've continued to use certain editing techniques to make my photos more aesthetically pleasing, but I've also been incorporating the use of props and other makeup products to make the images more appealing and not as boring as the previous ones. I've still got a long way to go, but I'm pleased with how these images look, and they're far different to those on my duvet.

I hope you liked looking back and what my blog used to be like and hopefully it has shown you that anyone can achieve a vast improvement with something if they put their mind to it. If you'd like more posts of this style, reflecting on the past of my blog, then just let me know and I'd be more than happy to provide them for you. Thanks for reading and I'll see you on Wednesday with a new post.

Love from Daisy x