Behind the ‘Gram: What You Don’t See in the Instagram Photo

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend! I’m back with another installment of my Behind the ‘Gram series where I share all of the time, energy and stories behind what goes into the pictures you see me post on my Instagram feed. Though it can be stressful in the moment, I always get a good laugh out of it when I reflect back in these posts. Without further ado, let’s get into it!

I seriously edited this photo for 1-2 hours. I know, that’s beyond ridiculous. The issue was that I couldn’t get the blue shade of the door to look how it actually looks in person. I did my usual edits with my Lightroom presets, then I had to go back in and alter the door color for such a long time before I could get it to look right. It kept appearing so green instead of blue! One of our friends (Jon) was over at the time, so I went and asked him and Justin if the color looked accurate to how it looks in person, and he said “you painted?” He didn’t even notice. 🤣 Needless to say, this photo was quite taxing — however, I absolutely LOVE the finished product!

In contrast, this is one of those photos that just came together so effortlessly — and let me tell you, this almost never happens! I went in our room to snap a quick iPhone pic of our new bench and little Lucia followed me, ran and jumped on it and just posed like this. Her being in the photo made it pop so much more, and let’s be honest, she made it so much cuter. 😉 This photo performed well on my feed and I think that’s 100% due to Lucia making it into the final shot, which wasn’t even planned. I usually stray away from iPhone pics because the quality doens’t usually come out as sharp as I’d like, but I used my go-to Lightroom presets with this image anyway and I was pretty happy with the outcome.

Though we’re always taking pictures at our house, it’s not normally pics of Justin and I together. I’ve realized that I don’t want to look back on my life when I’m older wishing we had taken more photos together, so I’ve made a conscious effort to do it more often. Taking more frequent photos of ourselves together means utilizing my camera’s self-timer feature if no one is around to take it for us. As you can imagine, this involved lots of attempts, pressing the button the rushing into position while still striving for a true candid. As you can see, Lucia didn’t quite grasp the concept. Regardless, these photos turned out so cute!

Some people may not realize that coming up with Instagram content is all about concepts and it’s not always as effortless as it seems. I get ideas in my head and do my best to try to execute them to create the shot I’ve imagined. In this image, these paint samples were already laying on this placemat on our kitchen island from us flipping through them. I thought it would make for a cute snapshot to share and chat about our paint selection process for our master bathroom vanity. I took the photo one morning before work, spent some time editing several versions of it to realize the lighting just was too dark and I’d have to retake them. It took me a few days to remember to reshoot it, and in the meantime, I came up with the concept of shooting it through the pampas grass on our island. That’s what created the blurred, unfocused section in the corner. For such a simple photo, it took me days to properly execute it.

This was another tricky one. I knew I wanted a mirror reflection shot, but it was hard to teach Justin to execute it. Though he has tons of experience taking photos for me, it’s not always easy to get someone else to recreate the exact photo in your head, regardless of how much experience you and the other person have working together. I had him sit in front of the mirror so I could take a picture of him as an example, but even the slightest movement from the exact position and angle that I took the photo from created a totally different image. I’m not sure how long it took up to capture this final shot, but I can tell you it was quite some time. We had to make sure that my face and the product I was promoting for a brand collaboration were in focus too, which was an additional challenge.

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Those are the stories behind some of my recent Instagram photos! I hope you enjoyed this post and found it entertaining. Be sure to follow me on Instagram (I’d love to have you around!), check out my previous Behind the ‘Gram blog posts here and enjoy the rest of your day!