I have been through a fair share of photographers in my three years of blogging. When I first started L&L, I would have college friends snap photos of me on their iPhone 3’s (I still had a Blackberry) on our walk home from school. The pictures were pretty blurry, so I eventually asked my cousin to take over as my photographer. She doubled as a model and we took turns essentially playing dress up and taking photos of each other with her basic point and shoot camera. From there, I started borrowing higher quality cameras and asking friends interested in photography to dedicate their Sundays to take pictures of me. I tried collaborating with a few professional photographers too. Their portfolios were always incredible, but they were completely inexperienced in fashion so the photos never came out like I had hoped. I finally bought my own fancy Nikon with fancy lenses that I don’t know how to use and made plans with other bloggers to shoot each other. That plan worked fairly well and I still do that sometimes, but this shoot was the first time I worked with a photographer who produced pictures that 1, I love, and 2, are completely in line with my vision. Editing sucks up most of my dedicated blogging time, so having these photos sent to me ready to go was an absolute dream. Every blogger knows good photos are everything. And good photographers are hard to come by. Thank you, Fernando Ceballos!

Advice to new bloggers: Before you do anything else, find a good photographer who you can shoot with consistently. I’m still working on the consistently part, but the better your photos are, the more followers you’ll get, and the more successful you’ll become. There’s a lot more to it in terms of being a successful blogger, but the prettier and cleaner your feed, the less work you’ll have to do to gain Instagram likes and follows.

Since we’re on the topic of photography, I’ll give you the greatest tip I ever received. It’s all about the lens. Before I bought my camera, I knew exactly what I wanted: street style blurred background pictures. So I asked a photographer I used to work with what I needed in order to achieve that. He told me the magic was in the lens and all I had to do was buy a 50mm 1.4 aperture lens. I’ve yet to figure out how to get the lighting right when I’m not shooting on auto, but that lens has produced many a magical shot.

OUTFIT BREAKDOWN:
Cold Shoulder Robbie Dress: Rebecca Minkoff
Beaded Layered Necklaces: Ela Rae
Gold Rings: Banana Republic/House Of Eleonore
Gold Cuff Bracelet: Banana Republic
Lace-Up Kavita' Ghillie Sandal: Ivanka Trump

Photo Credit: Fernando Ceballos

xx Esther