Hi everyone!

I hope you all had a fabulous week! Out here in Dubai, we’ve had a long weekend, which I definitely needed (the junior year sleep deprivation is real guys). This weekend also gave me some extra time to put together a post that I’ve been planning for a while now.

Back in the summer, you may recall that I was hinting at a lot of exciting content that was coming soon, and this is one of the posts! If you remember, my sixteenth birthday was during the summer holidays, and something I really wanted for my birthday was a ‘blogging board’. I had seen quite a few bloggers using them, and I really wanted to take my photography skills to a new level over the summer. So after hours of pouring over online stores, and different paint samples, I finally decided on my blogging board.

To backtrack a bit, my blog is based around advice for teenagers, especially expatriate teenagers. But it’s also a place where I share what I enjoy doing, and what’s going on in my life, and something you guys really enjoy reading about is my photography tips. I wrote a HUGE guide with all of my photography tips here, and another photography guide specifically based around flat-lays. However, this post is dedicated to one photography tip that I’ve found really takes my photography to the next level. And that’s having a blogging board.

For those of you who don’t know what that is (to be honest I didn’t until a couple of months ago), let me explain. If you’re a blogger, Instagrammer, or content creator, you will understand ‘the struggle’. You’ve just put together the most perfect looking smoothie bowl, and you want to snap a photo of it to post, but you can’t find a background worthy of being in your photo. All that styling you just spent so long doing, now goes to waste because your photo doesn’t have that ‘wow’ factor.

This may sound a little silly, but let me explain: When I first started out blogging and Instagramming I would spend ages making my food look pretty and ‘photo ready’ but my photos somehow always looked unprofessional. Unless you live somewhere with beautiful marble countertops or rustic looking wood paneling, it will always be hard to find a place to take your photos. Trust me, I tried taking photos outside in our garden, on my desk, on my bed, or even on my rug, but they just never looked right to me.

That’s why my tip for taking your photos to the next level for any blogger/Instagrammer is to find or invest in a background that you use specifically for taking photos. At first, I had a roll of wrapping paper that I put down and used as a white background for my flat lay photos or food photos. But when I saw blogging boards all over the internet I knew this was something that would improve my photos even more. Basically, my blogging wood is a square of wood planks with one side painted white and distressed, and the other white with a hint of gold. It’s something I can whip out when I’m taking photos, and I don’t have to worry about spending ages finding a clean background, that complements my photos, and doesn’t reflect the light into my camera. It just makes my photos so much easier to take, and it makes them look a whole lot more professional.

In this post, I’ve included some examples of photos I took using my blogging board as a background so you can see the difference that it makes. I got my board from Soularty, they specialize in food photography backgrounds and props. They were also kind enough to give me a discount code to share with you guys if you were interested in purchasing anything off their site. Use: ‘EXPAT_FROM_13_OFF’ to receive 13% off any purchase! I’m by no means saying that you need to purchase this product to take better photos, and this post is not an advertisement either! But my number one tip for taking your photos to the next level would be to find a background that you can regularly use to take food photos or flat-lay photos. Whether that’s a large sheet of paper, or whether you choose to invest in a blogging board, either one will make a difference to your photos!

You can see here the set up of my blogging board, I can put it down anywhere and get a nice photo!

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the photos I took for this post; I had so much fun taking them and using my blogging board! As always, let me know what you think of this post in the comments section, and what you use as a background when you take flat-lay or food photos?

Have a great week everyone!

Little Miss Expat

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