How to take gorgeous nudes…

dulcamarae:

…without feeling like you have to be a professional. When we first started our little tumblr project, we knew literally nothing about taking lovely naked pictures. Nowadays, we are often asked for tips about photography, and we thought we would collect everything we’ve discovered into one post and share it with y’all! 

* Don’t let the lack of fancy gear hold you back. The majority of the photos on our blog were shot on a Samsung Galaxy S5, by no means the gold standard of even smartphone cameras. It’s about how you use what you have, not the fanciness of your equipment.

*Use natural daylight or sunshine as much as you possible can! If you want to do something in artificial light, don’t just default to your overhead fluorescents. Instead, create a mood–put a lamp or spotlight in one corner of the room, experiment with shadows, light some candles. 

*Think about composition–is there random stuff in your photos, or is there a clean, beautiful background in each shot? Even if you are as messy and chaotic as we are, moving the laundry pile out of your backdrop is going to do you a world of good.

*Work on creating your own distinct, consistent “look”–something that makes your photos recognizable to anyone scrolling past them before they even see your username. One sneaky way to do this without fancy equipment is to pick an editing style or filter you use for all of your photos. We use the same VSCO filter on all of our shots, and it’s made a huge difference.

*Get an outside perspective. Don’t just rely on taking shots you can capture at arm’s length–tape your phone to the wall or ceiling, prop your camera on a stack of books a few meters away from the action. Our favorite method is to fix our phone to some object across the room, and then use the voice activation function to take pictures from afar, hands-free. 

*Most importantly of all, tell a story. At the end of the day, it’s not your body that’s going to pull people in, but rather the narrative you create through your photographs. Context-less penises, however impressive, will get you nowhere: often, it’s more about capturing intimacy or vulnerability than about posting closeups of various body parts. Make your photos speak to who you are, emotionally and physically, without saying a word–to your relationships, your loves, your passions, your fears. That’s a powerful, beautiful thing, right there. 

We’d love to see what you create. ❤