They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. But in the context of Instagram, your feed is most telling of your interests and lifestyle. To grow your follower count, it therefore makes sense to upload aesthetically pleasing and interesting content that keeps your audience engaged.
If you find yourself stuck in a rut, the following content creators should definitely be on your radar!
Chow Jia Hui
A familiar face in the local YouTube scene, Jia Hui aka Chow from The Smart Local doesn’t fall short of creativity. In a YouTube video, she revealed that her rainbow-themed Instagram feed is achievable with the help of 3 apps - Lightroom, Photoshop and VSCO. Before starting on a new color scheme, she usually uploads a photo with the previous and upcoming color for a seamless transition, as seen below.
Image: @chowjiahui
Olivia Eleazar
A visual designer by day and a freelance creative and business owner by night, it’s no surprise that Olivia’s Instagram pictures screams #goals. Her feed mostly features neutral colors such as white, beige, gray and black. Content-wise, she shares a lot of aesthetic and nicely styled product shots. Despite the stark difference in their feed aesthetics, Olivia relies on the same apps as Jia Hui for her photo edits - Lightroom, Photoshop and VSCO.
Image: @elkantlers
Fun fact: majority of her pictures are self portraits taken by herself. If she can do it, so can you.
Cloe Mak
Scroll through Cloe’s Instagram feed real quick and you’ll see that most of her photos are warm-toned, complete with a touch of floral and graininess. Having been in the creative line of work since 2014, Cloe’s artistic sense shines through on IG. She relies on both Lightroom and Photoshop for her photo edits.
Image: @jujujucloe
She pre-plans her feed with an app called Preview, and ensures the colors of her photos compliments one another. Uploading photos with clashing color hues are a big no-no - what you want is a smooth color transition. Head to her profile under the Highlight “edits” to learn how to incorporate gradient skies into your photos!
Shu Qin
Shu Qin, otherwise known as shuutravels on Instagram, boasts a feed that reflects her bright and bubbly personality. Though she’s not a full-time content creator, she definitely excels in the creative department. When Singapore was in phase 1 of the Circuit Breaker period, content creators found themselves sharing more content from home. And for Shu Qin, this was a breeze.
Image: @shuutravels
The secret to spicing up a plain wall in your background? PicsArt. And making use of whatever resources you can access. Browse through Shu Qin’s feed and you’ll find that she used cereal boxes, balloons, paper plates, mirrors, CNY decorations and so much more to craft her content... Get creative!
Justin Teo
For the foodies, financial risk specialist-cum-food blogger Justin Teo is definitely worth a follow. His beautiful and clean food shots are uploaded according to alternate backgrounds in black and white. Justin experiments with different angles in his photos and spices things up occasionally with complimentary props i.e. a simple plant or IG-worthy cutlery.
Image: @justinfoodprints
Justin runs his food account in his free time with basic equipment such as a camera and a handheld light source. Despite that, he manages to snap interesting food shots, and shares bite-sized tutorials/ BTS footages on his Instagram Highlight titled ”BTS”. To edit the lighting, his choice of app is of course, Lightroom, like the content creators mentioned above.
If you think about it, inspiration is everywhere - you just have to be attentive and train yourself to see things from different perspectives. As far as photo editing goes, Lightroom and Photoshop is here to stay. There are plenty of free tutorials online so give them a shot, and maximize your chances of approvals for campaigns!