Pinterest is the new rage for organizing all of those great things and ideas you find on the Internet. And perhaps even more important, Pinterest can drive high-quality, purchase-minded traffic to your business. Especially if you have some eye-catching, attractive, engaging and otherwise ‘Pinterest worthy’ photos.
Here are five professional tips and tricks you can do at home to help your visuals get noticed:
1. Crop your photos
It’s important to draw the viewer’s eye in on the subject of the photo. Cropping can help you do that.
For example, here’s a photo that has too much clutter in the foreground which causes your eye to be pulled away from the beauty of the picture.
Much improvement after the crop:
Here’s another example:
2.Use the “beauty shot”
Here’s the set-up:
Tape a sheet of white tissue paper on a window which sets up a white background and blocks direct sun. Then, push your table up right next to the tissue paper. Lay out a sheet or two of tin foil on the table – I put the shiny side up. Now you’re all ready to shoot.
If you’re not able to get the perfect look right out of the camera, try editing your photos with a program like Adobe Lightroom or on PicMonkey.
3. Use long photos instead of wide photos
To make a a bigger presence on Pinterest boards, use longer pictures as opposed to wider ones.
See how the longer picture shows up larger on the boards?
4. Declutter the background to draw attention to the subject
When you’re taking a picture, take a second to check out the background to make sure it won’t pull your attention away from what’s important.
For example, the background in this photo is way too cluttered.
Pull your subject away from the clutter and the picture will look cleaner and more professional.
Another way to declutter the background is to use a large piece of poster board to pull the focus more on the subject.
Put the poster board behind your subject thus helping the picture appear to be cleaner and more focused on the subject (for more ideas using the foam board and easy backgrounds read this or this post).
And here is the resulting picture:
5. Take pictures in good lighting
Many people work on projects at night when they have a few minutes free. But when it comes to taking pictures, wait until daytime when you have good lighting. That may be tough but it will make a huge difference in your photos.
Here are some examples of photos taken at night using a flash vs. photos taken during the day without a flash:
For more great tips on photography, including how to monetize the work you’ve already DONE, check out Peripheral Vision!
Want to partner with us on Pinterest? If you haven’t joined the Pinterest party yet, come on over!
Join our group board Mind Your Business by sending us an email with your request. Include your Pinterest username and we’ll send an invite right over!
Heather Allard
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My goodness, this is really great advice. My photos really need some work. I going to take some new ones with your set up ideas!
Thanks for stopping by 🙂 So glad you found it helpful!
That was very helpful, I’m just about to take another round of pictures to do some marketing on Pinterest so thank you for some wonderful tips
Hi. I’m having trouble getting my pictures to come up larger on Pinterest. I add a photo from my website, which is quite large, to my Pinterest page, and it always comes up small and wide. Can you tell me how to upload it so it’s longer like you suggested? You have some great tips here!
Great post. I’ll be getting some foam board, immediately. And you hit it right on the head with when to take pictures. I’m a night owl, which is terrible for getting the best shot. Sigh. Always craving natural light.
These tips are fantastic, and anyone can use them! The before and after pics really made the difference. Now I want to go take some pictures just so I can try the beauty shot.
Glad you enjoyed them, Kemya! 🙂
These are great tips! I do a LOT of photoshopping but should really put more effort into taking the photos in the first place. It’s hard with food that you’re about to eat! haha
LOL! I bet it is, Michelle! Maybe you should make a double batch of everything – one for eating, one for photographing. 😉
Great tips. I use white foamboard for most of my pictures. Still need to work on something to showcase my quilts. Any suggestions for larger items?
Thanks for the tips – I’ll definitely be trying the tissue paper, and also the plain background, which I’ve actually never thought of before, believe it or not! Kerri – I love pixlr.com – you can download a good app for your phone, or upload your images to their website and work on them there.
Thanks, Karen – hadn’t heard of Pixlr!
These are fantastic tips. Wow. Any chance some of these were taken with an iPhone? Since any photos I take will be 99% for the web anyway, it would be great to be able to just use my phone, use an app to edit, then upload. Any iPhone specific tips or favorite apps? Thank you!
These are awesome tips, Katie! Thank you. Love the ‘before’ and ‘after’ examples. 🙂
Oops–forgot to mention: PicMonkey is what I use for adding text to my images. Super easy!
We love PicMonkey, too – and it’s mentioned here. 🙂
These are great tips–thanks so much for sharing these. (I didn’t know the tissue paper trick and can’t wait to try it.) Another really important thing: Create a great image for the top of your post that includes a description of the post and your URL. That way, if it’s pinned badly, others can get to your original post. You can find me on Pinterest here: http://pinterest.com/ritaramstad/
Great tip, Rita! 🙂 Thank you!!
Great immediately useable tips…love the beauty shot idea!