The Two Best Apps for A Beautiful Instagram

Instagram is the "it" social platform these days, especially for bloggers and influencers since it is wonderfully engaging, easy to use, and easy to gain followers and extend your social reach. Even if you just use it for fun, it's always nice to have a thoughtful, curated feed of photos that really pop! In the past year I myself have come to rely heavily on Instagram as an extension of my blog and a way to gain exposure. There are several other apps and tools which I have have found super helpful in creating the best visually engaging Instagram feed, and I wanted to share my two favorites with you!

UNUM: I have come to rely heavily on this app, and it's hard to remember life without it! UNUM is an extremely helpful app for organizing the photos you plan on posting to your Instagram and seeing how they will all look together before you post them. It is super useful for maintaining a color scheme and making sure you are spacing out your outfit shots vs. close ups, food, and scenery shots. I love that I can plan my posts ahead of time and play around with where I want each photo to go and what order they look best in. You can also edit your photos right in the app, have captions ready to go with each image, and even see stats on which hashtags are getting the most results, and what times of day your posts get the most interaction. The only downside is that this app is for iPhone only (sorry everyone else!!). 

Lightroom: Can you believe the mobile app is totally free to download on your phone?! How amazing is that. I have wanted to download Lightroom onto my computer for ages, but the application is fairly expensive, so I was thrilled when I found out the iPhone app is free! It is extremely helpful with editing photos for my Instagram page -- in particular I love that you can adjust each color in a photo individually. I had previously become frustrated when I wanted to to saturate certain colors in a photo without saturating all of them (for instance saturate the foreground outfit colors but not the leafy green background!), and Lightroom enables this! After using several basic photo editing apps, Lightroom is a dream with the features it offers. It has become my go-to for editing color in my images, and I sometimes will even send photos from my computer over to my phone so I can edit the colors!

Now you know my secrets! Between UNUM and Lightroom I feel like I have been able to massively upgrade the quality of my Instagram photos and feed. Of course, taking good pics is an essential foundation to creating an visually appealing page (and I can't say that all my pics are perfect, but I give it a shot!), but having some helping hands in the process certainly can't hurt!
I also recently started using a follower-tracking app which shows you which of your followers are not following you back, who has unfollowed you, etc. and this info is super helpful if you are trying to boost your following and understand follow patterns. Between these few apps I feel like I have a much better approach to creating a beautiful Instagram feed with photos that represent my life and the things I love!

Check out my Insta @charlotteclaraxo!

What are your favorite apps? I'd love to hear in the comments!

xoxo, CC

Monochromatic Pink

One of the recent projects for my certificate course was to create an editorial-style photoshoot using an iPhone to experiment with different filters and techniques. Starting with some inspiration searching and creating a mood board I came up with the idea of a monochromatic look with a bold and playful vibe. Being both the photographer and model can be super tricky so I decided to shoot the photos in my apartment using my pink couch as the color inspiration. The arch lamp and brick background make this an interesting dynamic space for a photoshoot.

I found some deep pink pieces in my closet to go with the couch and create a monochromatic look. I wanted a playful vibe so I put my hair up in a high bun and added layers of jewelry and a bold pink lipstick. Then I experimented with using different filters in my iPhone camera and trying different poses. While the photo quality is nothing close to usable for an actual editorial, I had fun with the project and learned about the camera settings on my iPhone camera. For this shoot I ended up liking the "Fade" and "Chrome" filters best because of how they played with the colors and saturation.

These are a few of my favorites photos from the project!

Top: Old Navy. Jeans: BDG at Urban Outfitters (similar). Sneakers: Keds. Earrings: Banana Republic. Lip: BareMinerals "Risk It All"

These are a few of the images that inspired my project.
(images from pinterest)

xoxo CC

Style Stalking

If you like fashion one of the best things to do during NYFW is to grab your camera and camp out in front of a fashion week event hall for a few hours. You're guaranteed to see some amazing and interesting outfits, and probably a few celebs and bloggers too. I had such a blast snapping photos of my favorite looks this past week, and taking inspiration from all of the extraordinary outfit choices. I wanted to wrap up my fave looks with another post dedicated to street style, so here you go!

xoxo CC

Getaway

The best part of summer is relaxing by the water on a sunny warm day.... So I took a few days off (again) to do just that. I hopped on the train out of NYC to visit my family in the Adirondacks, where I had four whole days of sleeping late, yummy food, and catching some sun. 

Every day had an afternoon rain shower, but we managed to sneak in an island picnic one day before the storm clouds hit. 

Raspberry wine and a boat-shaped bowl make for ideal afternoon snacking... 

If you stand still in the shallow water dozens of little minnows come up and start nibbling the dead skin off your feet. It tickles a lot but it's like a free pedicure! People pay a lot for this technique! 

Landscapes around Grandma's house... I've always loved wandering in the mossy woods and picking wild berries off the bushes.

Ice cream and waffles: two of my favorite treats that I got to enjoy on this trip. Donnelley's is famous for their homemade soft serve!

Now it's back to work in the city..!

xoxo CC