Swimming Pool Games to Keep You Active This Summer
May 22, 2023
Akin to social networks such as Facebook or Twitter, Instagram is a website and mobile app designed around sharing your favourite photos with friends, family, and the world. It’s highly mobile-oriented focus has helped it to grow to become one of the most popular image-sharing platforms in existence.
Users start by creating a profile similar to other social networks and then follow friends, family, celebrities, influencers, and brands, whose pictures appear in their news feed. Likewise, users can then take their own photos and share them with their followers.
Now that you know what Instagram is, you’re almost ready to start taking stunning pool pics to share with your friends and family. It’s tempting to jump straight in and start snapping away, but you may end up disappointed your photos look nothing like the pics you see on the profiles of celebrities and influencers. Taking great Instagram worthy photos is an art, but fear not. We’ve got some great top tips to help you get started and have your photos looking just like the professionals in no time.
The first thing to know when taking an Instagram pic is that for the best result you should avoid using the Instagram app itself to take them. This may seem counterintuitive, but while the Instagram built-in camera option is easy to use, and does come with a variety of filters, its settings are fairly limited. You will have much greater control, and therefore be able to take better pictures, using the native Camera app on your device. There are also some great third-party apps available once you have some experience and want even more control and fine-tuning.
Photos and their subjects will always look their best under natural lighting. This doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of the atmospheric pool lightening you had installed in the evenings, in fact, quite the opposite. The trick here is to aim for either natural daylight or ambient lightning rather than the bright and harsh lightening generated by camera flashes.
Continuing from the point above, the best photos are taken at sunset and sunrise. These times — shortly after sunrise and before sunset — are often referred to by photographers as the golden hour. Direct sunlight makes it hard to get a good colour and light balance in the photo, but the diffused golden coloured light offered at these times is perfect. If shooting during the middle of the day, choosing a brief cloudy moment will also help to diffuse the harsh direct sunlight.
Composition is the placement of items, subjects, and landscape within the photo. One of the most popular composition methods is the Rule of Thirds, and it’s also one of the easiest to learn. Divide the image into thirds both horizontally and vertically, and aim to position various items around this grid. Most phone cameras even have an option to overlay a visual Rule of Thirds grid on the screen to help out.
You also want to frame your subject in the photo. Unless you have an infinity pool and the space to work, a photo of a person simply surrounded by water will rarely look impressive. Instead, try to frame them in the picture by introducing some of the pools edging into the foreground (bottom third). This works especially well from lower angles, which ties in nicely to the advice on posing further down.
It’s also important to pay attention to the background even if it’s out of focus — however useful they may be, your pool cleaning supplies will rarely look stunning in an Instagram pic!
Striking the right pose will make all the difference, and will ensure you are looking your best. Following the Rule of Thirds from above, aim to have your head around the two-third mark in the frame. Elongating your body by stretching out your legs and keeping your arms slightly out (but not too far!) will help to accentuate your natural shape without making you look bigger than you are, a common problem, especially with Instagram’s squarer aspect ratio.
Narellan Pools offer a wide range of fiberglass swimming pools professionally built and installed by our expert craftsmen to deliver you a finished product that is both functional and looks great, especially in those Instagram pics. We have pools available to fit any space and budget, and our expert designers will work with you at every step of the process to tailor the design to your unique style and requirements.
Want a swimming pool you can show off on Instagram? Speak to the Narellan Pools team today!
