Bookish Photos: My Process

Besides reading books, I really enjoying taking pictures of them. I would consider myself an amateur photographer, buts its definitely more of a hobby than anything else. It’s a way to express my love of books that allows me to be behind the camera (if I choose) and create something that I consider beautiful. So, for a little bit of a change of pace, I decided to show my process of taking pictures and show off a few of them!

My first step is to lay on the floor of my room, which is where I take most of my pictures. If inspiration strikes, I’ll take some outside. But my room has incredible lighting and some awesome backdrops that its hard to stray sometimes. Anyway, most of the time I’ll come up and just flop on the floor. This allows me to generate ideas if I have none or plan out how I’m going to tackle me idea.

Next, I’ll set up. Personally, I don’t love pulling down a bunch of books and creating things with them. It just isn’t my thing. So, this step is usually me setting up my tripod and/or getting the one of two books I want to highlight.

After that, I will either fail to get the picture I wanted or get the shot I saw in my head. The former is the one that happens the most. I either get too excited and think of something outside my skill set or something simply doesn’t look the way I want it too. Of course, this doesn’t mean I’m horrible at what I’m doing, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking it. (If you ever experience that, with anything, I’m here to tell you that you’re wonderful truly and sometimes things just don’t meet up to what’s in your head)

After I get over my inital frustrating, I try anything I can think of. To different angles to different backdrops and placements. I’ve been able to get some pretty awesome pictures from failed attempts and I’m getting better at not beating myself up if I don’t get exactly what I want.

I actually don’t have much of an editing process. Yet. I would like to try more of that out someday! But I will occasionally throw a filter on my photos to fix the lighting or make them pop. And I usually bring up the brightness to lighten things up a bit! The apps I do use are 1967 and VSCO. I know VSCO is free but I can’t remember if 1967 cost anything. They have a good amount of free filters that are amazing. I haven’t bought the extra ones yet, but the free ones have been great so far!

There you have it! That’s the process I go through when taking my bookish photos! Most of the time, it doesn’t take me very long since I’m in the realm of simple photos at the moment. I would love to maybe try taking more complicated ones in the future, but all in due time!

Thank you for reading!