Top tips for taking a perfect nail photo
By Scratch Staff | 26 March 2019 | Expert Advice, Feature
Scratch Stars award-winning blogger, Natasha Lee, reveals her top tips to perfecting an attention-grabbing nail design…
The two biggest things that can make or break a business, in my opinion, are word of mouth and social media presence. You need to make sure that both are positive, and it’s crucial that you keep your business and personal profiles separate on social media.
Potential clients want to look at your social media pages and see the quality and treatments they can expect from your business.
Great photos of your work are vital; whether you use them to showcase your skills to your fans or reach potential new clients. You don’t have to have an amazing camera set-up to take fantastic photos quickly at the end of an appointment; you just need to know some insider secrets.
Here are my top tips for taking perfect pictures:
- Posing the hands softly over a clean towel with your logo, around some sparkly cloth or around a crystal jar is much more flattering than taking a picture of fingers that are poker straight. Straight fingers tend to create wrinkly-looking knuckles that can ruin the look of the picture. Your client is also less likely to be happy being tagged or featured on your public social media if they feel their hands look old or unattractive.
- Don’t overdo the oil! Cuticle oil is essential at the end of a nail service to counteract the (often) drying effects of IPA and acetone, but for the sake of photos, less is definitely more. After you’ve applied cuticle oil and massaged it in, take some desk roll and wipe off all the excess – including that on the nail surface – to remove the oil and make the top coat look glassy; not smeared. Also remember to moisturise the hands so they look their best.
- Be conscious of the background or foreground. Make sure that the area that you are photographing is clean and tidy with no disposables, dust or tools apparent in the frame (unless it’s intentional product placement), and remove any dust or glitter from the hands before taking your photo.
- Focus! Most camera phones now work with touch auto focus, so once you have the nails and hands nicely positioned in the camera screen, tap on one of the nails closest to the camera and it should nicely focus on the nails and blur and darken the background giving a more professional feel.
These key points may sound a little time consuming at first, but I can promise I never spent more than an extra two minutes at the end of an appointment getting a good picture. Those two minutes can pay back wisely bringing in new clients and helping you build your portfolio.
If you want to learn even more of my social media secrets, then head over to my website and sign up for my online course; Nailing Social Media.