How To... Take A Great Picture Of Your Nails

Hi dolls!

Today's post is about photographing your nails and manicures, one more important part when it comes to nail art!

Nail polish was always a passion of mine and when I joined Instagram and saw all those amazing nail artists there, I wanted to be a part of it. The wild painting began.

Over the time, I discovered how important it is, to take a good picture of your mani if you want to post it on any social media. It's just so sad if you spent so much time on a design and the photo won't show the real beauty of it!
I'm going to share a few tips and tricks with you today, so nobody will ever question the gorgeousness of your nails!

• Lightening is everything - Don't ever take your pics when it's dark (unless you have a super good light box!) and with just your room light on. The pictures will appear yellow because of the warm, orange light and may be super blurry. Daylight is the best you can get, try to take your pics outside or directly infront of a big window. Plus, it's always better not to step in direct sunlight, so you won't get weird shadows on your photo.
• The focus is on your nails! - Take a plain background, best white or black. If there's too much going on in the background of the picture, those things will take the attention away from your mani and that's not what you want!
• Quality, quality, quality! - I know, not everyone can afford a great camera. But phone cameras made a huge step forward as well, so it's totally fine to use these. Just make sure the camera is focusing, maybe you have to try a few times which angle works best for it. You can get objectives for your phones from stores and online, if you want to improve your pictures but don't want to spend a lot of money on an expensive camera. If you have a good camera, make sure you read the manual - it really helps to get the right setting for the pic you want to take. If you neither have a camera or phone with a good quality one, maybe you have some lovely people around you who can borrow you theirs for a few minutes!
• It's not just the nails - The best nail design ever will not look as good if you don't keep your cuticles and hands pretty as well! Clean up around your nails and moistorize your cuticles before taking the pic - read more about that on my nail care post here.
• Not too close, not too far - As I said before, the focus should be on your nails, so try to take the picture not from too far away. But if you go too close to them, it'll look weird as well. Just take a second and figure out what distance works best for you.
• Stay natural - This is just my personal opinion, but I feel like manicure pictures are the prettiest if you don't edit them too much. Of course, you can lighten them up, correct the color and play around a bit, but don't use too many filters on them. Especially when you want to show the true colors (whoops, Phil Collins in my head now) of the polishes, it's better to stick to the original photo.
• Relax - Nothing ruins a photo of your manicure more than a cramped hand pose. You don't have to include all five fingers, if you can't get a relaxed looking pose, don't do it. I always just photograph my nails without the thumb, because I can't get it to look good - and I'm happy with it. Just find a pose that's comfortable for you, there's nothing like THE hand pose, everyone's different.

Here are just some examples I shot for you. I prefer the first pose, I do this on most of my photos.
I like my mani pics square, mostly because I almost always post them on my Instagram. Side note: If you do this, add a watermark. There are many many nail art thieves out there!

The polishes I used here are both from the OPI Muppets Most Wanted collection, the light pink base is "I Love Applause" topped with "Let's Do Anything We Want". I love those names by the way. Sometimes I buy a bottle of nail polish just because of the name. Shame on me, but that's my weakness.

I hope this was a little helpful!


Love,

Alina