So this is a post that has been requested and something I’ve been planning for a while! How do I come up with and plan my Instagram themes? This year I decided that I wanted to do something a bit different with my Instagram to make it stand out and just look a little more unique next to other people’s really. I am a really creative person and love coming up with ideas and concepts for my content and making my feed look more like an art gallery than just an Instagram grid. So I thought sticking to a strong theme would be good and push me to be much more creative too! However I didn’t want to have to stick to one colour, theme or idea forever like some accounts do as I’d undoubtedly get bored so I thought having something that I changed up monthly or every couple of weeks would be fun for both me and my audience. Hopefully it keeps people coming back to my account to see what’s up next!
Concepts:
I like to have a really strong concept for each theme. So I write things down and try and create a little ‘mood board’ for each idea! This really helps to come back to if I’m stuck for ideas mid theme as well because I need to make sure I create enough content for each concept. I jot ideas down in the notes on my phone and then use my planner to write things down properly and brainstorm. I spend a lot of time doing all of this before I shoot and before the theme starts on the grid. Colours, locations & seasons are big influences.
My first proper theme this year (I wanted to do brights in January but got ill so couldn’t keep that going!) was February and I chose ‘Love’ with the colours all being Red & Pink. This was a great one to start off with I think as it was Valentines month and there was lots red, pink, heart themed props around in the shops. Plus my wardrobe is full of red and pink anyway!
In March I did Pastels. For this one we went around scouting as many pastel coloured locations we could find! Luckily Brighton and Arundel (two of my favourite local photo spots) have lots of pastel houses! I had notes like candy, ice cream colours, mint, lilac and peach etc. I had in mind that it was just going to be a rainbow mix of pastels running through my feed but having put it together on my planning app (see more on that below) I decided it didn’t look as good as I thought. So ended up splitting the colours up and doing about 6 posts in each pastel shade and trying to graduate the colours slightly so it flowed in between. I really enjoyed creating this one I think the colours looked really pretty together!
I then had about 10 days of doing Easter themed posts! I LOVE Easter time and a couple of my friends and I did a hilariously fun shoot wearing bunny ears and as many Easter Eggs as we could manage to carry. I kept the colours mostly to green, yellow and white which to me reflect Easter time and had lots of daffodils in my shots too!
Once May came I switched my theme to Florals! Which I have to say has been my favourite so far. My mum and I love going to gardens, she’s a member of the National Trust as well so is always discovering new & idyllic spots to shoot content. I find they’re usually much more relaxing, calmer places to shoot compared to on the streets as you have less traffic and people constantly walking past. I ended up posting a couple of weeks worth of Cherry Blossom and pink florals which was super popular! I even won Zoella’s #CapturingSeasons competition with this shot!(link). I moved onto slightly shorter spells in different colours. I did bluebells & pastel blues, beautiful white blossoms, bright yellow tulips and rapeseed oil fields, green leafy shots and fields then wonderful purple wisterias and lilacs! I also red to come next as well. My floral notes included: colour themes, gardens, floral backdrops, tulips, blossom, peonies, wisteria, daisies, lupins, baskets of flowers, floral products.
My next theme was all content from my trip to Jersey in June. The channel Islands are beautiful and really great for photography so I got some lovely shots there. This was my first Travel theme pf the year and also the first time I did series posting images all with me in them. No flatlays or landscape/lifestyle shots! So that was a bit of a change. I really love creating travel imagery as it's a lot of fun and really nice to look back on. This is something I really want to do more of next year if my health and finances will allow it!
Then it came to my 30th Birthday and I decided to go all out to celebrate! The concept was 'Pink Party' and centred around the pink and rose gold balloons and party decorations I had bought and just lots of fun, celebrations and sparkle! I did 12 days of giveaways over the course of my birthday as well to celebrate with my audience. This has to be my favourite theme so far.
My most recent theme was to celebrate my favourite songwriter and artist, Taylor Swift's new album Lover being released! I had been working on this theme for about 3 months in fact. I wanted to recreate the ME! Music Video as she had 7 amazingly beautiful and colourful looks for that. I found some similar outfits and shot 3 different looks/scenes from the video in my house then edited them in photoshop to recreate the scenes as best I could. I am self taught at photoshop since the age of 15 so I'm by no means a pro but I have had a lot of practice! I'm so so chuffed with how they all turned out. The other shots in the series were taken down by the beach and were inspired by the album photoshoot. Lots of pastels, tie dye, pink, blue and purple, I also recreated the glitter heart on my face!
My next theme was all content from my trip to Jersey in June. The channel Islands are beautiful and really great for photography so I got some lovely shots there. This was my first Travel theme pf the year and also the first time I did series posting images all with me in them. No flatlays or landscape/lifestyle shots! So that was a bit of a change. I really love creating travel imagery as it's a lot of fun and really nice to look back on. This is something I really want to do more of next year if my health and finances will allow it!
Then it came to my 30th Birthday and I decided to go all out to celebrate! The concept was 'Pink Party' and centred around the pink and rose gold balloons and party decorations I had bought and just lots of fun, celebrations and sparkle! I did 12 days of giveaways over the course of my birthday as well to celebrate with my audience. This has to be my favourite theme so far.
My most recent theme was to celebrate my favourite songwriter and artist, Taylor Swift's new album Lover being released! I had been working on this theme for about 3 months in fact. I wanted to recreate the ME! Music Video as she had 7 amazingly beautiful and colourful looks for that. I found some similar outfits and shot 3 different looks/scenes from the video in my house then edited them in photoshop to recreate the scenes as best I could. I am self taught at photoshop since the age of 15 so I'm by no means a pro but I have had a lot of practice! I'm so so chuffed with how they all turned out. The other shots in the series were taken down by the beach and were inspired by the album photoshoot. Lots of pastels, tie dye, pink, blue and purple, I also recreated the glitter heart on my face!
The big question: what theme will I do next? You’ll just have to keep watching my Instagram feed to see!
- Love Theme (Red/Pink)
- Pastels Theme
- Spring Floral Theme (Purple)
Shooting:
For my themes I always try and shoot at least a couple of weeks in advance so I can edit and plan my feed. I often get asked what camera I use to take all my photos on. I use an Olympus Pen E-PL7 and I mainly use the 45mm lens which is good for portrait shots as you get a crisp subject and a blurred backdrop, I use this one for my flatlays too. However the kit lens it comes with is really good for location shots where I want to get lots of the background in in detail too. I shoot all my flatlay and product shots myself and try and tie in the theme & colours as best I can to flow nicely between my fashion shots. My Mum shoots pretty much all my outfit, fashion, travel shots for the past 4 years. We work really well together, she knows the kind of shots I like and is a great location scout! She helps me physically (as most of you know I have chronic health issues) and is quite happy for me to set up shots and place her somewhere when I have a really specific eye for how I want the shot to look. It gives us an extra excuse to go out and do fun things together too.
Editing:
Another question is what do I use to edit my pictures? Well for all my Instagram images I use the Lightroom app on my iPhone to edit them. For each of my colour themes I usually create my own preset (which is really easy to do) so I can edit them all in one easy click! 9 times out of 10 I will go back in and individually edit the brightness and contrast etc of each image until I think it looks perfect. I’m happy to do a separate, more in depth post on how I edit in Lightroom if you guys are interested? I often use Snapseed after I’ve exported from Lightroom too. Which is a great free editing app and allow you to brighten and add saturation to specific areas in your photo with a brush tool. This is great for my product shots in particular where I might have a bit too much shadow on one side or I want a colour in something to pop more. For my blog images or if I’m wanting to add something extra to my photos, like the petals in this post(link) or the sparkle in this one(link), then I will use Photoshop on my laptop which I actually taught myself how to use when I was 15.
- Jersey Travel Series
- Easter Theme
- Spring Floral Theme (Pink)
Planning Apps:
I’ve been using planning apps for a while now. They basically allow you to upload your instagram images to a ‘mock grid’ before you post them to your actual feed and play around with them to see what looks good next to each other and plan in advance. It makes SUCH a difference! Apps include: Planoly, UNUM and A Color Story - which is actually the one I use currently as you have a limitless number of images so you can upload to it each month so can play around, edit and reupload to your hearts content. You can also edit the images within this app if you want too. This means I can plan everything really far in advance and decide how I want my themes to look.
If you have anymore questions as to how I create my content and plan my Instagram themes or ideas on what you’d like to see next then please do post them in the comments!
- Pastels Theme
- Pink Party, 30th Birthday Theme
- Taylor Swift Series
