I started taking pictures in 8th grade. My best friend and I joined a photography class at school, and here we did our very first experiments with visual art. Black and white pictures of each other, shot on film that we developed ourselves in the school basement. I still have those pictures of her in a box somewhere in the attic of our old apartment in Denmark. She’s still my best friend and I love that I still so often think of her when I take pictures. 

Since then, I’ve had long periods of time where I hardly picked up a camera and long journeys around the world where I would take pictures of everything I saw. 

When I started working in the fashion industry I suddenly found myself surrounded by lots of talented professional photographers (I even married one of them) and because someone else was always holding a camera in their hand, for those years, I stopped being the one looking through the lens.

Instead I took the role as the stylist, and I put my energy into creating the beautiful scenes, that someone else would then capture with their camera. 

When I became a mother, I slowly started to rediscover my love for photography. Not just of my children, but of little weird details from my every day life, off moments and pretty little scenes that I would put together. Slowly my love for creating a balanced or off-balanced picture grew bigger and bigger, until I suddenly realized taking pictures was one of my favorite things to do. And it still is. Not just to push the button on the camera but to create a story inside the little frame. To move things around until everything looks perfect, to come up with an idea and sometimes to pair it with words that will add even more meaning to what you see. 

Lately I’ve had a lot of questions on my Instagram about tips on taking pictures. What camera I use, how I edit my pictures, how I create a personal and unique look.  And since it pretty much the same questions and I’m not always the best at getting around to answering those private messages, I thought I would do a post about it. So i’ve written down a few very personal tips on taking pictures. This is only what I like to do, to consider and to focus on when I take pictures. You might know it all already, or you might not be able to use any of it. But if you can, I hope it can add a little more joy and fun to your photography journey.

Camera

Even though I would love to be able to tell you, that I only use a DSL camera or even better that I shoot all of my pictures on film, truth is that I shoot almost all my private pictures on my iPhone. It’s a pretty old iPhone 7 and I’m sure I would get better results technically by using a real camera or a newer phone, but carrying a camera around just doesn’t happen all the time and an update of my phone will have to wait.

Clean your lens

This is probably my number one rule for taking iPhone pictures. I always make sure my camera lens is clean before taking a picture. Wiping it down before every shot makes a huge difference in clarity and light.

Make the best of what you have

I’m slowly learning to stop trying to force my environment to be something it’s not. I love minimalistic decor, light wooden floors, white buildings and straight lines, but to be honest, that’s just not what my everyday surroundings look like after moving to Brooklyn. So I’m slowly learning to get the best of out what I have, which is wonky ceilings, brown houses, cracked floors and vintage furniture. 

Light

Like any other person who likes to take pictures, good light makes the whole difference to me. I always shoot in daylight as I really dislike what a flash does to a picture, but at the same time, I always avoid direct sunlight as I don’t like hard shadows and too much contrast. If I really want to shoot outside on a sunny blue skied day, I always look for a soft shade and I do whatever I can to avoid getting the blue sky in my picture, as I just don’t like the color.

Straight lines

I love straight lines, and I always like to make all lines in my pictures as straight as possible. This means holding my phone straight when I shoot, and looking at the background just as much as looking at my subject while shooting. If you find it hard to get your lines straight, you can try and use the camera grid.

Personal style

While Instagram and Pinterest are both never ending sources of inspiration when it comes to ideas for beautiful pictures, I always think a unique idea, an individual taste and letting the photographers personality shine through makes the best pictures. I know this can be hard, especially if you’re sharing your pictures on Instagram, where certain themes (think coffeecup in linen sheets, well-set restaurant table shot from above, closeup of a blooming flower) get more likes than others, but try and do it anyway. It really does give you so much more satisfaction when you know you didn’t just copy someone else’s picture.

The technical stuff

Even though an I-phone is not exactly a real camera, I think it’s worth getting acquainted with the features and options the phone actually does give you. I always take my time to use the manual focus (you just tap the screen wherever you want your focus to be) and I almost always turn down the exposure (the light) a bit (tap the screen this swipe the little sun up or down), as I find that lifting up the light a bit in post-work is much easier than fixing an overexposed picture.

Styling

While I was still working in the women’s fashion industry I did a lot of styling jobs, and here I learned how much it means how a stack of clothes is folded, which way the coffee mug is turning, if the colors clash or if something is placed to close or within too much distance from each other. In other words, paying close attention to all the little details is the key to a good picture. When I shoot a set up of objects, I usually use a few (or many) tries before everything looks good, and since you often can’t see if lines are straight or things are overlapping  before you look at the actual picture, be sure to shoot a few pictures as you go. Look carefully at them, make changes and shoot again until you’re satisfied with the result.